TheCable

While many have been lamenting the effect of the fall in the global prices of crude oil, Audu Ogbeh, minister of agriculture, wants the situation to remain the same.

Speaking on Wednesday at the Ogun State 3rd Investors’ Forum, the minister said oil boom led to the neglect of the agriculture sector, which he described as the first industry that God gave to man.

He said the country had been emphasising the importance of agriculture in recent times because it has been left with no other option.

Ogbeh said the sector remained the biggest employer of labour, biggest contributor to the gross domestic profit (GDP) of the country, and the biggest “anchor of a strong and powerful society”.

“A nation suddenly discovers her nakedness, her inability to feed itself,” he said.

“People insist that rice must keep flowing in from Thailand and palm oil from Malaysia, and tomato paste from China, and cookies and biscuit, and in the process the food import bill for this country is $22bn per annum, a luxury we can no longer afford because of oil prices.

“We have to return to reality. Oil and gas have served their purposes, but that era is gone and I hope it doesn’t return to the good old times, because if it does, we have a knack for forgetting very quickly what yesterday was like, and what the future can be.

“The unfortunate thing about agriculture in this country is that it has been the most abandoned, ignored, and perhaps ridiculed. We should have invested oil revenue in agriculture like Malaysia did.”

The minister commended the government of Ogun for sustaining the forum, saying it will help other states to realise that agriculture has lot of potentials that have not been explored.

“Two years ago, I came as a farmer. This time around I am involved in issues of policy making in the ministry of agriculture,” he said

He also highlighted some of the problems confronting the sector, and lamented the plight of farmers.

“Agriculture is undervalued in this country. We confine it to the peasants in the village, that nameless, poor individual whose children swear by all the books never to do what their father did that made life so difficult for them,” he said.

“The farmer who grows the yam, the cassava is the one who eats the least, the one who is the poorest. His output is so low that it is hardly enough to feed his family, not to talk of nothing left to sell. Yet he is the one who has sustained all of us. At least subsidise our feeding. Whether we believe it or not, that is the truth.

“In the first place credit to agriculture is a big challenge. Bankers don’t have interest in agriculture because they say it is too risky. The interest rates are not supportive of agric. 18%, 25%, I have been in this business long enough to say that such rates are not good. The bankers have their own arguments. They say borrowers do not pay, they said the yield from farm income is too low, but they eat food harvested by farmers.”

Raising some fundamental questions, Ogbeh provoked his audience into deep thought.

He also spoke on the nature of politics, which he said is the most dangerous profession in the world.

“We need to ask ourselves these fundamental questions: Are we farming? Are we investing? If we are, why are we still importing? If we are not, what are the reasons? We have to invite younger people into this sector, but are the youths interested in coming? Is agriculture as sexy as ICT or the movie industry? Or even as attractive and seductive as the illusionist terrain called politics, which is dangerous and unreliable,” he said.

“I got into politics fairly early in life. A long time ago, and I can tell you that of all the dangerous professions on earth, there is nothing like it. You can hardly predict anything. Your election promises are hopes which you cannot be sure of fulfilling because you do not know what the economy will be like when you get into office, and the public holds you to your world. It’s a tough terrain.”