Nigerian government has been indicted for not honouring the Malabo declaration, which it assented to in 2003, and good ot the Nigerian parliament to approcge ign 2005. They declaration contains an understanding by African countries mandating the government of each member state devoting a minimum of 10% of its national budget to agriculture. This was to encourage effective promotion of agriculture and the development of the rural communities in the continent.
Bu Ade Adefeso, chairman of the industrial group of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) has stated that Nigeria is not applying the Malabo Declaration of Agriculture in its budget preparation. He revealed while the country’s food production is increasing in an arithmetic progression, indicating slow growth, its population was growing geometrically. “We have a food crisis emergency which if we are not careful, we might be seeing the worst food crisis in decades.” Therefore, he called on the federal government to provide a duty-free window for people in agribusiness as well as provide enabling policies that would guide production, such as subsidising inputs like fertilisers and easy access to farm credits.
He stated that for Nigeria’s agriculture to attain food sustainability, it needs adequate private investments. Nigeria currently produces about 5 million tons of rice and consumes about 7 million tons leaving a deficit of 2 million tons, hence there is a need to ramp up production. Adefeko, who is also the director of corporate and regulatory affairs of Olam Agri stressed that Nigeria’s agriculture budget, which is less than 10 percent of the total budget, focuses more on recurrent expenses than capital needed to enhance the sector. He highlighted the limitations of food imports and called on private investors to invest in agribusinesses, which he says will boost sustainable food production.
“The deep pockets (Agro industries) have what it takes to take us out of our food crisis. This is because they have what is called scale,” he said. Adefeko revealed that the country spends an average of $4 billion on wheat imports annually, which he says is not sustainable. According to him, private agro-industries like Wacot, BUA Foods, Olam Agri, and Dangote have the resources to pull farmers together as well as empower them.
“Olam Agri supplies about 10 percent of Nigeria’s rice but this is still small,” Adefeko said. “Now imagine other agro-industries investing in rice production, we would have about 50 to 60 percent in production.” “Agribusiness is an expensive business and we need to understand the end-to-end value chain — from seed to shelf – therefore we need to do more in terms of investments,” he added. In the 2025 proposed budget, agriculture’s allocation of N826.5 billion is only 1.7 percent of the total budget (N49.74 trillion). “In other countries we see production being subsidised but in Nigeria, we subsidise consumption. We have to start subsidising production,” he stressed.
