Questions answered in this article: - What did Tinubu promise that his administration will do to improve Nigeria's agricultural sector? - What does the Renewed Hope agenda's promise of land clearing entail in simple terms? - What efforts will go into achieving Tinubu's agricultural agenda, taking it from audacious promises to reality?
On his Dec 5, 2022, campaign stop at Chatham House, London, Bola Ahmed Tinubu (BAT), then-candidate and now president of Nigeria, once again laid down his Renewed Hope agenda for Nigeria.
At the centre of his agenda is a focus on agriculture as a tool for achieving nearly everything. Agriculture was the ready answer for food security, job creation for young people, and foreign exchange earnings.
However, when asked questions about his agenda and plans, he delegated answering to his aides’ a move that BAT’s campaign team and avid supporters attempted to pass off as a show of leadership strength, although many were not impressed. Most importantly, the unbiased and undecided wondered whether the big promises counted for audacity or just another political joke.
What is not funny is the myriad of issues that the administration of Tinubu must decide on and preferably tackle headlong. Nigeria’s current socio-economic and fiscal situation is dire and leaves little room for kicking the can down the road.
What is Tinubu’s track record?
The president is adjudged to be astute in economics, politics and leadership. His claim to fame is the economic turnaround of Lagos state.
He believes that he can do the same for Nigeria, and agriculture is one of the major levers of his plan. He advocates increased involvement of young people in agriculture, to the dismay of many who prefer to be engaged in more glamorous professions like entertainment and technology. Although, in truth, agriculture remains a viable economic option in Nigeria, as it is all over the world.
Agriculture as a means
Throughout his campaign, Tinubu ascribed outsized (compared to other sectors) responsibilities to agriculture in his outlook for youth employment and productivity, security enhancement and economic rejuvenation. He did these to the point where the phrase “cassava, garri, ewa and agbado” became a trend. All of these are names of staples, and the last three are Yoruba names for cassava flour, beans, and corn.
Tinubu had made declarations where he pointed to engaging millions of young people in security-enhancing endeavours and feeding them with cassava and other Nigerian staples while at it.
The sharp criticism his fixation on agriculture and staple foods generated may tempt observers into thinking these were gaffes to be taken with little seriousness. However, in his Renewed Hope Manifesto, Tinubu doubled down on his outlook for agriculture.
He promised to deliver considerable transformations in agricultural land availability, irrigation, and youth engagement. For a largely neglected and decimated sector, the extent and scale of his promises are akin to the Marshall Plan for Europe’s reconstruction after the devastation of the second world war.
“A vibrant agricultural sector will bring more investment opportunities for enterprising Nigerians, including our youths, and help diversify our economy away from oil and gas dependence”, Tinubu’s manifesto declares.
It further mentioned areas of focus that will serve as levers to support the actualising of a vibrant agricultural sector. They include establishing commodity boards, modernising grain reserves, developing rural infrastructure, irrigation and water catchment development, farm cooperatives, access to finance, and large-scale land clearing.
If done well, the identified levers will transform Nigeria’s agriculture. They’ll resolve several challenges plaguing the sector and hindering it from hitting its potential. However, the declarations of the manifesto are very high-level submissions. They are akin to meta-narratives with little empirical, quantitative, and measurable meaning.
Tinubu is not alone in doing this, as this is the norm with political and electoral promises in Nigeria. They start this way and then get little done with little accountability.
The large-scale land clearing lever of Tinubu’s promises for agriculture provides some quantitative view into the manifesto’s outlook. It allows dimensioning of the whole outlook with land clearing as a fulcrum. This article will look at the land clearing area and reference it to other levers to get a quantitative view of the promises of Tinubu for agriculture, its potential impact, and its cost.
Tinubu aims to double Nigeria’s cultivated land from 35% of available arable land to 65% in 4 years. Putting this in context, Tinubu has looked at all the land cultivated from smallholder farmers to commercial farmers and all that is in-between since the beginning of time-preceding Nigeria itself and seeks to double it in 4 years. To do this means to clear 28 million hectares of freshly opened land within that period.
This is the audacious promise that the Renewed Hope has made, apt as Nigeria’s agriculture requires massive reconstruction intervention due to the devastating effects of decades of neglect.
Clearing 28 million hectares of land for agricultural production has multidimensional consideration, impact, and consequences, that must be well thought through. These considerations align within and outside agriculture and other chains of value to form tangible outcomes useful for individuals and countries within economic and social dimensions.
Land cleared will not stand alone, nor will it be useful by itself. Farmers must own or manage it, infrastructure such as road and irrigation must support it, farming input must be applied to it, mechanisation will be required to make it perform optimally, labour will be required, the harvest will need processing, market, and offtake, and between the farms and market, there is the need for logistics such as storage and transportation, and whereas all of these require financing.
Therefore, if serious, Tinubu’s promise of doubling Nigeria’s cultivated agricultural land stock is to build a new agricultural system, the size of which is currently available, the quality of which must be better than is currently available and will be done in 4 years.
Does this sound bogus? Maybe. Although, there is hardly any other way a serious leader can approach Nigeria’s challenges in areas such as food security and youth unemployment using agriculture.
An effective agricultural system must integrate three major components that produce, sustains the produce, and gets the produce to market. In simple terms, typically, this system will consist of a farm, road, and market. It is appropriate to dimension Tinubu’s promises through these lenses. This article explores what could go into his plan’s production (or farm) aspect.
Farm
The Renewed Hope Agenda only talks about opening 30% of the available arable land in Nigeria. However, to do so with this percentage of land has implications that we must thoroughly consider.
Land clearing
Land opening requires productive input and output engagements to meet the overall objective of the effort. For ease of reference, this article will subsume land clearing into the farming component of the agricultural system and comment on it alongside other farming considerations.
Land clearing must start with identifying, then ascertaining agriculture availability, acquiring, and clearing. Clearing, on its own, has considerations like the availability of capability, capacity to clear and how to pay for it.
Agricultural land in Nigeria has long been verified to be about 69 million hectares; therefore, Tinubu has little or no work validating this. However, ascertaining the characteristics of the land around pinpointed locations, and referencing the plants they are optimal to grow-within the context of fit and value for local and export markets, requires some work, and Mr President-elect’s effort must start from here.
He must then quickly ascertain land availability for agriculture, where they are, and under what terms and conditions he can access them for his agenda.
Though the Land Use Act, 1978, puts all land in Nigeria in the hands of government at the state level, quite a large chunk of land is held by communities, individuals and corporate entities in predominantly 99-year leases.
For Tinubu to find his 28 million hectares untitled (and preferably contiguous to allow clustering in production zones), land may be at least cumbersome or impossible.
Therefore he may need to engage the state governments, communities, corporates, and individuals that hold titles to the lands and get them to make these lands available for his agenda. His administration will have to figure out the approach or mix of approaches that will make his land acquisition for agriculture amenable to the title holders.
This may include incorporating them in his agenda with economic and social benefits, outright purchase, or invocating some sort of Eminent Domain-overarching public interest laws. There are conversations to be had and decisions to be made.
Mechanisation
After acquiring land, then the grunt work starts. To clear 28 million hectares in 4 years requires about 4 thousand sets of land clearing equipment working to clear 5 hectares daily.
People must operate and maintain, support, and service the equipment. Ancillaries like fuel and spares must be available for the job, on time and in total because we have just four years. Also, it is crucial to consider that Nigeria’s tractor density is currently at 6.0 per 10 thousand hectares, translating to about 0.27hp/hectare against the Food and Agricultural Organization’s (FAO) recommended 1.5hp/ hectares.
Depending on who one asks, there is a vast gap between tractor requirements and supply. Nigeria’s tractor requirement ranges between 80 thousand (World Bank) and 700 thousand (FAO) to optimally serve its current cultivated land. Tractor supply numbers are around 45 thousand, leaving a gap between 35 thousand and 655 thousand for the current requirement, and 70 thousand to 1.3 million if adjusted for cultivated land additions promised by Tinubu’s agenda.
In addition, these staggering numbers of mechanisation supplies will continue beyond the purchase of equipment. The tractors and equipment will not operate themselves, and a 2800% increase is not only ambitious but a daunting task.
The easy way to do this may be to pay providers reflective of current competitive market rates for land clearing and hope they’d expand their capacity by 2800% in 4 years to get the job done.
However, they must contend with structural issues like sourcing scarce forex to buy the tractors and equipment, port delays and customs duties. All of these may add significant time and cost creeps to execution and extends the delivery time by a significant amount akin to the infamous Nigerian Tailors.
Irrigation
Irrigation must be a linear addition to mechanisation. Even if the full complement of the target 28 million hectares of land is not irrigated, up to 10% (2.8 million hectares) should be considered for irrigation.
There is a strong link between irrigation and productivity, especially for cereal grains and vegetables, which constitute the base of many of Nigeria’s staple foods. Also, there is the fact that they can grow in multiple cycles annually.
Today, only about 290 thousand hectares of land are irrigated in Nigeria out of 38 million cultivated and 92 million available, translating to 0.9% and 0.3%, respectively. To irrigate even 10% of the newly open land will amount to a 10-fold increase in available irrigated land in just four years.
Several questions arise, such as what type of irrigation to deploy per location, considering crop and terrain peculiarities and water availability. Irrigation requires power, so energy sources must be considered and provided.
Cultivation
If the land is cleared and some of it irrigated, it must be cultivated. Making the best and optimal use of the cleared land may require farmers of a new inclination that is divergent from the profile of the current average Nigerian farmer: a 43-year-old male with a primary school education. He does not consider, understand, appreciate, nor can he access the resources for growth.
Note that this smallholder farmer and his cohort produce 70% of Nigeria’s agricultural output, with about 1.8 tons per hectare of cereal grains in annual yield. Thus, they must be appreciated and included in development outlooks.
However, Nigeria must create a new segment of farmers that may be tagged “MEDIUMHOLDER”. This new sect will efficiently hold and utilise an average of 30 hectares of land. They’ll expand their operations to become integrated farming and processing enterprises in backward and forward integrations within the value chain.
The average farmer in the USA, one of the largest agricultural producers in the world, produces about 893.4 million hectares of land with integrated processing capacity. The USA has about 2 million of these farmers in 2022. Nigeria must aspire to produce in this configuration, starting with at least 28 hectares per farmer.
Herein lies the opportunity for Tinubu to engage about 1 million educated young people to own 28 hectares of land each.
This group may have some appreciation of agriculture (like an agriculture degree from a tertiary institution). They could produce about 330 MT of grains, providing revenue of ₦77 million per annum at the current farmgate price. They can expand into processing in an integrated outlook if managed and supported well.
Meanwhile, they’ll employ and support ten jobs each, to aggregate at 10 million jobs ascribable to Tinubu’s land clearing effort.
Inputs
Still on farms in an effective agricultural system, genuine and affordable farm inputs such as seeds and fertilisers must be provided. There must be a deliberate effort to adapt these inputs to Nigeria’s peculiarities through research, development, and localisation. At the same time, they ensure their standards and safety for humans and the environment.
They’ll need efficient systems that stabilise them and get them to farmers and other users on time, in full and at affordable rates.
Managing and stabilising cost as a function of input availability across seasons is essential. Typically, cost move by as much as 50% between on and off-season, leaving room for speculation and impacting farmers’ ability to afford input. Conversely, this affects the chain and results in higher food prices.
In summary, excellent and impactful agricultural practices must be parlayed with land, irrigation, mechanisation, and inputs. It must be encouraged and delivered through extension practices and incentivised. Preferably using newer, effective and efficient channels that tools like digital technology can support.
Traditionally, this responsibility sits with the agricultural extension structure in research and educational institutions, agriculture-related MDAs, state-based Agricultural Development Programmes (ADP), Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) and private practitioners in outgrowers’ systems.
The verdict on the current agricultural extension system in Nigeria is that it is inefficient; some say it is non-existent. Regardless of which verdict is correct, it is evident that the existing agricultural extension and information dissemination structure cannot support Tinubu’s outlook on agriculture. It must be overhauled alongside land clearing and other efforts.
Additionally, while it makes sense to strengthen existing systems, the advent and penetration of digital technology create an opportunity for a total turnaround of agricultural extension in Nigeria. For effectiveness, efficiency, and impact in multiple dimensions, this must be considered and invested in.
