By Dele Sobowale

NOTE: Last week the series ended abruptly in the middle of the paragraph below. Readers were therefore deprived of the benefit of the entire argument. This is the reason for extending this article to a third part. Fortunately, there has been a later development which needed to be incorporated in our evaluation of what the Economic Summit or Retreat achieved. Please read on.

Another programme borrowed from the IBB era is the wheat project. Those of  us who were close to the fraudulent wheat project on which IBB’s government threw away hundreds of millions of naira can only hope that there was a typo-graphical error there somewhere. Only God knows who persuaded Babangida that wheat, which is a temperate zone crop, could be cultivated, with comparative advantage, in the tropical sun. Again, this was advertised as a national programme from which Nigerian farmers would benefit. In reality, it was a Northern project benefiting only a few states – Borno, Sokoto, Kano, Kaduna and to some extent, Plateau.

The wheat variety which was introduced to Nigeria was the product of the Green Revolution initiative pioneered by Dr Borlough, Nobel Prize winner, for agriculture. That variety depended on irrigation and massive in-puts of fertiliser for its success; rain-fed methods produced low yields. The only irrigation systems that could cope with wheat were all in the North; in the Bakolori Dam site, near Talata Mafara (then in Sokoto State) and Tiga Dam, Kano (a lasting monument to Alhaji Audu Bako, Kano State Governor under General Gowon who set Kano rolling as the nation’s bread basket). Despite all these, the wheat project was a failure; the yields were low; the quality poor and the project was corrupt.

It has been necessary to state all these because one expects the Federal Government to do its home work and find out why the first initiative failed. One cause of failure was deliberate falsification of results. Late Admiral Ikhomu, military VP, second in command to Babangida, once visited the Kano project on a fact finding tour, as a prelude to the Federal Government advancing more funds to the state’s wheat programme.

The state government took the VP up in a helicopter to see the vast areas of wheat farms already cultivated and thriving. The official tour lasted three hours. Returning to Kano, the Admiral called a Press Conference and blasted the critics of the wheat project. From what he had seen Kano State alone can make Nigeria self-sufficient in wheat production. Poor VP. Later that evening, at the Kano Club, it was revealed that Nigeria’s second citizen had been cruelly deceived. All he saw was grass and no single wheat stalk.

Two days later, millions more were released to Kano State – to grow more grass, naturally. It is a fact, easily demonstrated by looking at the records that the Federal government was defrauded by all the states pretending to cultivate wheat. So, for the last time, someone should tell every President of Nigeria not to listen to anybody proposing a wheat programme. There is no comparative advantage in it and Nigeria has several crops which we can develop and cultivate more easily with good yields and with attendant great returns on investment.

Finally, IBB’s government was warned to desist from those two programmes. But, it appears that each administration invariably attracts some predators or economic saboteurs who promote bogus projects from which they would benefit at the expense of Nigeria. If Buhari still insists on NALDA and wheat programme, he can be sure there is one person watching closely as the fraud unfolds.

Meanwhile, tomato puree importation had been prohibited, at least on paper. Yet, Nigeria’s markets are flooded with imported tomato puree. The effort to promote self-sufficiency in tomato production is obviously half-hearted. Yet, this is one crop which can be cultivated in every corner of Nigeria and virtually year-round – if the incentives are there. It can even be used for alley cropping along with cassava and yams – for instance.   A huge internal market exists because of our dietary habits. There is no single one of our known 200-plus ethnic groups which does not use large quantities of tomato for its food. The goal with tomato, as with cassava, is to go beyond being the largest producer in Africa or the world, but to exceed our own limits of consumption. Then, we can start exporting.

However, there is a major obstacle to overcome. The Honourable Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development recently lamented that Nigerian banks don’t fund agriculture. He sounded as if government is helpless. But, that is only because no government had developed the will to make banks comply.

The Federal government is, by far, the largest customer of any bank in Nigeria. All that is required to discipline the banks is for the Federal Government to withdraw its accounts from any bank refusing to fund agriculture and the resistance by the banks will collapse.

WILL is the key to success. Incidentally Buhari tried it before. When his government announced in 1984 that multi-nationals wanting foreign exchange must establish farms, breweries and food and beverage companies were the first to comply. In less than one year over 500,000 hectares of land had been acquired and plans were in top gear for several integrated farms. I was involved in one of them. If IBB had not scuttled that policy, Nigeria would have been closer to food security today.