Cassava: The Route To Food Self-sufficiency In Nigeria

By Chuks OLUIGBO

“External food dependency is the most pernicious form of national insecurity,” wrote Onwuka Njoku, a frontline professor of economic history, in his book, Economic History of Nigeria in the 19^th and 20^th Centuries. Without doubt, any nation that relies on other nations for its major food supplies puts itself at a great risk. This is why a nation like Nigeria must strive to achieve self-sufficiency in food production.

Cassava farm

Nigeria is an agriculturally-endowed nation. Leading economic historians agree that agriculture was the mainstay of the traditional economies of the various peoples of Nigeria in the pre-colonial and colonial periods. Up to the early 1970s, agriculture accounted for well over 80 percent of Nigeria's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the major value of the country's exports.

That was before the oil boom era. With the oil boom, Nigeria had the opportunity to build up its agricultural sector with the petro-dollars accruing from the oil sector and transform Nigeria once and for all into a food-sufficient economy – as did countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, etc. Regrettably, the government of the day frittered away that chance and instead embarked on a spending spree on white elephant projects. Consequently, Nigerians gradually abandoned agriculture and everybody faced crude oil. Petroleum became the pivot around which the nation’s economy revolved such that today, any quake in that sector has adverse negative effects on the whole economy.

With the passage of time, successive governments seemed to have realized the mistakes of the past and so made efforts (even if half-hearted) aimed at redirecting Nigerians to the farms. Such agricultural programmes as the River Basin Development Programme (RBDP), Operation Feed the Nation (OFN), Green Revolution (GR), the Directorate for Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure (DFRRI), the Better Life for Rural Dwellers Programme (BLRDP), among others, were initiated. Specifically, OFN was launched against the background of alarming decline in agricultural production, galloping food prices, increasing food import bills, and accelerating flight of youth from the rural to the urban areas. Unfortunately, the programme yielded no positive dividend except that the huge sums mapped out for it ended in private pockets. Its successor, Green Revolution, was also an abysmal failure and created greater problems than it came to solve.

In order to solve the problems created by GR, the government in power embarked on unprecedented importation of rice, wheat, and other food items through a Presidential Task Force. Overnight, Nigeria, which used to export food to other countries, became one of the world's highest importers of food items, and consumer goods topped the list on Nigeria's import records. That situation has continued to worsen with the passage of time. For instance, a 2011 report from US Wheat Associates Inc., a trade group for the world's largest exporter of wheat, projected that Nigeria would soon displace Japan as the biggest buyer of United States' wheat. Already, Nigeria is the world's largest rice importer. Currently, according to the Minister of Agriculture, Akin Adesina, Nigeria’s food imports are growing at an unsustainable rate of 11% per annum, fuelling domestic inflation and driving poverty. “We are importing products that we can either produce in abundance – such as N356 billion worth of rice, N217 billion worth of sugar, and N97 billion worth of fish – or are importing products that we can easily find local alternatives for us to reduce our import bill, such as N635 billion being spent on importing wheat.”

Harvested cassava tubers

Perhaps it was against this backdrop that President Goodluck Jonathan on November 30, 2011, introduced the cassava bread initiative as a component part of the Cassava Transformation Agenda. While presenting a sample cassava bread (made from 60 percent wheat flour and 40 percent cassava flour) to Nigerians at the Federal Executive Council meeting, the president said: “I have been eating this bread for the past one week and I will continue to eat only this bread until I leave State House. We must encourage what we have. Other countries that became great did not wake up one day and become great. If you look at the history of a country like China, at a time they closed their door and restructured everything, began to think again and by the time they opened their doors, the rest is known by all of us. For us as a nation to move forward, we must also tame our exotic taste. Some of these things we bring from outside are not even as good as what we even have within our country. And I believe with this, so many of the people who produce bread will start to use different percentages of cassava flour.”

He was right on point as through the new initiative, bakers in Nigeria are expected to supplement wheat flour with 40 percent locally-produced cassava flour in bread. The president has also shown some seriousness by following up the initiative with bold fiscal policies in the 2012 budget. These include raising the tariff on imported wheat, ban on importation of cassava flour, zero taxes on all equipment and machinery for processing high quality cassava flour and composite flours, 12 percent tax rebate for all producers of high quality cassava flour who attain the 40 percent substitution with high quality cassava flour, etc, which will take effect progressively. The government has further invited four major bakeries in the country – Wilson Foods and Confectionery Limited, Leventis, Food Concepts, and United Trading Company (UTC) Nigeria – to spearhead the production of cassava bread and other cassava flour-based confectionery.

Already, some stakeholders in cassava production are embracing the idea. For instance, the Association of Small Scale Agro Producers in Nigeria (ASSAPIN) promised to cooperate with the Federal Government to increase cassava production to complement government’s efforts. Also, the Federal Institute of Industrial Research, Oshodi ( FIIRO), Lagos, is already producing cassava bread in commercial quantity, beginning with only 10 percent cassava flour inclusion, which will be increased progressively until the 40 per cent target is achieved.

Others, however, are still skeptical given their bitter experience with such programmes in the past. Recall that in July 2002, the Obasanjo government inaugurated the Presidential Initiative on Cassava, which made compulsory 10 percent inclusion of cassava flour in wheat flour production, 10 percent blending of ethanol with premium motor spirit, and the use of cassava starch by industries. The initiative was expected to boost local industries involved in the processing of cassava products, generate about $5 billion annually via exports, and create employment. Farmers across the nation embraced it, and it also stirred the interest of entrepreneurs in cassava processing firms. But then, at the level of implementation, the initiative died, and both farmers and processors who embraced and invested in it with the hope of benefitting from its numerous advantages were left aground to count their losses. 

Adesina: Agric minister

 

The above fact does not, however, diminish the gains of a policy like the present one, most important of which is leading the way in Nigeria’s drive towards internal food-sufficiency. If cassava succeeds, attention can be shifted to other food crops like rice. Already, cassava is cultivated in every part of the country in very large quantities and, from statistics available from the Raw Materials Research and Development Council, Nigeria is the world’s largest producer of cassava, with a production capacity of 49 million metric tons – about 19 percent of world production. Nigeria can leverage on this comparative advantage, as did even smaller cassava-producing countries like Thailand, which capitalized on an export-led growth to become a major processor of cassava and exporter of cassava products, mainly to European Union countries. Today, Thailand is the world's largest processor of cassava – 40 million tonnes a year – mainly into vegetable starch.

But for this to work in Nigeria, government must device how to tackle the challenges currently faced by cassava farmers in the country such as lack of access to high yielding varieties, limited access to appropriate cassava processing technologies, and highly volatile price swings for cassava due to poorly developed markets; get the bakers to cooperate with government; build storage houses where cassava will be stored before it is transported to milling factories; convince consumers that cassava bread is as good as wheat bread; increase government’s budgetary allocation to agriculture from its present 2 percent; among others.

Finally, the government must be firm in implementing this policy, which has been described as “a make or mar policy that if well superintended could kick-start the liberation of the country from the woods”. I conclude with the words of Dupe Olatunbosun, professor of agricultural economics and former chairman of Ogun State Cassava Revolution Programme, thus: “The present administration should resist the blackmail of the wheat importers, majority of whom are the elite in the society. Nigeria will not collapse. It was Pandit Nehru, first prime minister of India, who said after India’s independence in 1948 that if India could not produce enough textiles to clothe its teeming population, she should go naked. Indian textile mills roared into action, churning out millions of yards of various designs of cloths. He also said if India could not feed herself, it was more honourable to die than to be dependent on another country before Indians could eat. That was the beginning of Indian grand agricultural industries.” This is the path Nigeria must toe if the current cassava initiative must succeed, and if the long-term dream of internal food-sufficiency must be achieved.