There is hunger in the land and the whole populace is feeling it. Both the rich; not so rich; the average and the poor are feeling it.
This is because pressure of inadequacy and high prices of food- now out of the reach of the poor has made all to share with others who don’t have.
As a result, those who appear to be rich are now poor because if you are rich or have sufficiency and your neighbor goes to bed hungry, you are not only poor you are in danger.
It is that bad in the region which hitherto fed itself especially during the early 50s and 60s through the farming activities of rural settlements and the Twenty farm settlements established by the government of the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, are not only bubbling due to government interest in farming but the rural settlements and villages daily churn out food to the semi-urban areas and cities such that prices of foodstuff are predictable over the years.
Today , in the South West region which comprises six states of Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Ondo, Osun and Ekiti prices of food has gone beyond the reach of the ordinary folk.
In the last one year, prices of Gari, tomatoe, beans, yam and other staple food items have increased by over 400 %-four hundred percent, with the price of a ‘plastic’ of Garri which used to cost N700 last year now sold in the market for 3800. Same for Tomatoes, Yam flour and others .
This is beside the price of Rice, which has over the years become our staple e food item, has reached an astronomical N80,000 per bag, forcing many households to drop it from their menu. Unfortunately, the alternative to Rice too has gone out of the reach of the ordinary folks as stated above .
Today, the general saying, ’bi ounje bakuro ninu ise, ise buse’, meaning – when Food is removed from need of the people ,much of the problem of poverty has resolved is real.
Yes, we may have some living in affluence here and there, but today the ratio of poverty is spreading like bush fire because more hands have been removed from farming and the result is famine.
There is less farming activity going on in the geographical landscape of the region which is approximately 191,843 square kilometres of land . Today, the demography of the region according to the Food and Agricultural iOrganisation,FAO, as at 2006 is 27,722,437 square kilometres, land area is 166,631 while there are 842,499 hectares of forest reserves.
Also, the fact that a reasonable portion of the cultivable part has been lying fallow over the years due to neglect by the government- which has shifted focus to monthly Handouts from the federation account has contributed greatly to the self imposed famine that has been the lot of the region.
Another problem is the menace of bandits and herdsmen who trampled upon farms, ravaged the farms with their cattle with impunity .This is obviously due to lack of punitive measures by the federal government especially during the regime of former President Muhammadu Buhari.
The oil discovery in Nigeria in 1958 which came with unplanned wealth and boom in the late 60-70s blind our sense of reasoning and made us lazy, to the extent of abandoning our natural source of living –farming.
Now, the price of that criminal neglect of the agricultural sector which ordinarily is man’s first source of living before mineral resources buried deep in the ground, has resulted into food inflation on a scale which has never happened in our history, not even during the intercine wars of the early centuries. The consequence is that prices of commodities have been left to the vagaries of demand and supply because the region could no longer feed its teeming populace which has doubled over the years by the reasons of migration from other zones of the country as a result of insecurity especially the North and the South east. According to the Food and Agricultural Orgnisation,FAO,Nigerias food inflation rate increased to 32.84% which represents 8.72% higher than what was recorded in November.
Hence when last week, the Governors of the region met in Lagos for their periodical meeting, they came out with a resolve to reverse the ugly trend and bring back life and living to a tolerable level as they met it when they are growing as young children.
But then, the governors have to do more than talk but ‘walk the talk’ to change the distorted values of the region by reintroducing farming back to the sense of the people and take practical steps to ensure integration and that farming must attract the seriousness as was done by the late sage Chief Obafemi Awolowo who never imported food for the region and made Cocoa our natural import earnings with which he developed the region to the envy of other two regions in the country.
His government established 20 farm settlements and five agricultural institutes all over the region and this visionary step practically ensured food security as the institutes came out with new technologies for both subsistence farming and cash crops with which the various landmarks in the region were developed and built.
Now, the question on the lips of people of the region who were old enough to feel the impact of his policies is, where are the farm settlements of Ado Odo, Ago Iwoye,Ajegunle,Coker,Ibi Ade,Ikenne and Sawonjo all in Ogun state. Also the famous Lalupon farm setlements in Oyo state,Idanre,Orin-Ekiti,Fashola,Ilora,Eruwa,Ire saadu,Akufo,Ijaye inOndo and Ekiti states.They have all disappeared. No thanks to successive military and civilian governments the region has been most unfortunate to have. What is left of the settlements are ageing farmers and i infrastructure with no replacement for them by the governors who are now six in numbers.
In the area of livestock production, people are asking where is Western Livestock Company which created ranches in Oyo,Lagos,Ogun and Osun states producing livestock for the teeming populace then.
An example is the Imeko cattle ranch in Ogun state with 4000 hectares of land with five Dams and Oke- Afo with 12,000 hectares of land –all has been abandoned and left to rust over the years.
The price of that neglect is what we are paying today.
Between 1960-1970 ,agriculture contributed 55.8% to the Gross Domestic Product ,GDP of the region but crashed to 28.4% in 2018 according to the Nigeria Bureau of Stastistics,NBS.
Besides, only 34 million hectares of Nigerias 72 million hectares of agricultural land were cultivated.
Today, with a population of over 22 million, Lagos slaughters an average of 8,000 cattle heads daily and this with an average price of N500,000 for each cattle, amounts to N4b worth of cattle consumed daily . The region can take advantage of this and stop importation of cattle from neighbouring countries with the multiplier effect of creating employment for its teeming youths.
The various higher institutions and moribound training and research institutes in the region like the Federal Univeristy of Agriculture,FUNAAB,Abeokuta,Nigeria Cereal Research Institute and the International Institute of Agriculture in Ibadan, should be engaged to contribute to knowledge in the area of better modern methods of agriculture for the benefit of the people and economic prosperity of the region.
Now, that we have six governors in the region with more than enough cultivable lands, it weans more resources and more people which population has increased to at least 40 million sixty five of which are youths.
For the declaration of the governors to boost food production and supply to have meaning, there must be conscious efforts during this rainy season to revive the dead twenty settlements and with the growing population, each of the states need at least ten farm rplant food and cash crops as per their capacity.
Now that the governors promised regional integration, each of the six states in the region must get build new settlements in addition to the revived moribund ones to produce farm products in their areas of comparative advantage .
Since Lagos,Ogun and Ondo are states surrounded by water, production of Fish which has become import driven has to be encouraged to produce enough protein for the teeming population.
There is no doubt that producing food requires guaranteeing the safety of the farms.
In this regard, the menace of bandits and terrorists in the area over the past five years have had it effects on the food production and supply chain. The six states must empower and equip the Amotekun more to combat the activities of this men most of who are from our neighbouring countries of Chad,Niger,Mali and Cameroon.
No sustainable activity could happen in the farming areas without the presence of enough security men.
What is more, the Development Agenda for Western Nigeria,DAWN, should also be encouraged to bring into reality its planned regional railway and electrical generation and transmission plans now that the sector have been unbundled from the limits of the unitary constitution by both former President Muhammadu Buhari and incumbent Bola Tinubu.
There is no doubt the fact that the region have on its hands what it takes to banish hunger and poverty through the self –endowed natural resources .But lack of political will on the part of our Governors through by the proper application of far reaching programmes to revive agriculture and change the narrative of hunger and pervasive poverty which we have no reasons to live with in the first instance.
Time to divest our reliance on oil as a means of sustenance is now and the earlier the better the governors activate the abundant human resources and natural endowment of the region. Agriculture for now remains the only sustainable means of growth and developments as a people for a nation that cannot feed itself is a slave to others.