Linking agriculture and industrialization : a politician's perspective

Nigeria will conduct gubernatorial elections in mid-April, followed by the presidential election a week later. Francis Ugwoke of This Day newspaper conducted an interview with Ugochukwu Agballah, a candidate for the governorship of Enugu, situated in the east and one of the country's 36 states.

While his statements may just be the expected electioneering of an aspiring office holder, he does have some interesting things to say about agricultural development which probably apply across much of the continent in principle, if not in details. Rather than whether his specific proposed remedies are correct or workable, it is the evidence of the careful, deliberate process of his thinking and clear grasp of issues to do with agricultural development that are striking. Only the part of the interview dealing with agriculture is featured here, in abbreviated form.

Editor
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Q : What is your programme on agriculture, considering its importance to the people of the state?

A : Initially, before I went on my tour, my blueprint was firstly to try to expand agriculture. But after my tour, I had to review the blueprint because of the harsh condition I saw our people in. So our emphasis will now be on infrastructural development; secondly, security; thirdly, agriculture,agro-allied industrialization, education, health, sports development in that order.

80 percent of our people are involved in agriculture, but we did research and discovered that Enugu State loses an average of 530 million naira ($4 million) to food stock from the North. Traders in the North bring in all the tomatoes, onions, pepper, beans. Seventy percent of the yam, goats, and cows are from the North. We calculated that N530m is the amount Enugu residents spend on these items. To me, that capital flight is excessive.

The first measure to enhance agricultural production is to build roads to food producing areas. We have identified the communities that have extensive agricultural business and intend to give access roads to these first. The North has advanced more than the East because of the type of land they have. Tractors are being used successfully in the North, but have not been successful in the South-east, especially in Enugu, because of our (uneven) terrain and our (thick) vegetation.

So we would need to stump the expanses of trees, which is very expensive. We want tractors that will turn around and cultivate despite the trees. We have designed a mini-tractor that we will make available to our farmers. They will no longer be involved in agriculture that is full of pain, as in cases where they use hoes and cutlasses. So the measure now is to have these small tractors in places where we carry out extensive clearing, and stumping of those areas where we have a large portions of land.

We intend to put in place a state agricultural mechanization company which will produce mechanized implements for use by our farmers. We shall also invest in preservation and storage. We are not going to be involved in direct production of agriculture because it has failed in the past, but we will set up demonstration farms in all the local governments and communities. We also intend to have farm extension workers in every community in the state.

We shall also set up a fertilizer application and regulation agency because of the research discovery that our use of fertilizer is abysmally low. Some countries,especially in Asia, Europe and America, make use of 110kg per hectare of fertilizer. In Enugu we use 5 to 6 kg per hectare. This has led to low output in agriculture. We are also going to do soil tests to determine the types of fertilizer applicable to given geographical areas. We shall then tell the communities that this type of fertilizer is suitable for your soil. That will be the function of the Fertilizer Application and Regulation Agency. Government will also make sure that farmers get their chemicals, insecticides at subsidized rates.

In Enugu, government has not invested in agriculture. In some states in the North, we have instances of government giving 1,000 tractors to farmers. So we are going to redress this. We did research on why there is poverty in Africa and discovered that it is because there is no linkage between agriculture and industrialization.

So we are going to put in place policies to link agriculture with industrialization. We have identified 28 crops that have the capacity of eradicating poverty in Enugu, one of which is cassava. Enugu produces four million metric tons (MT). We intend to increase production to achieve about 20 million MT in our first four years. To link cassava to industrialization, we are going to put in place an ethanol producing industry. Ethanol is being used as a gasoline blend for use in cars and is the fuel of the future. Even as I speak to you, China is positioning itself as the world's largest producers of ethanol. That is why they budgeted $54bn to buy cassava chips from Africa. And Africa today is making the same mistake our founding fathers made with regards to trade with the West; by being merely a supplier of raw materials, this time to China.

In the 1960s we were the largest supplier of raw materials to the Western economies. There was a time we were number one supplier of raw rubber, cocoa and cashew nut to Europe. We never linked these agricultural products to industrialization. If we had established rubber, cocoa and cashew processing plants, we would have eradicated poverty. This is the reason for our poverty. We are still making the same mistake with crude oil. In the case of cassava, we want to position Enugu as ethanol supplier to the world. It is possible to do it.

Also with cassava, we will produce animal feed. We can also generate electricity from the waste. We can also produce starch. There are about 200 end uses of cassava and we intend to utilize all of them, so as to have a cassava economy in Enugu State. Another agricultural produce we are looking at is neem, which grows widely here, and its pharmaceutical and chemical derivatives are diverse. Today, India makes over $2bn processing neem and exporting it to the whole world. We are going to expand the production of this product because it is a thing that small scale industries can be encouraged to get into.

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