My friend, Yūsuf Sanusi is an educated, diligent and hardworking farmer from Oyo State, Nigeria. He often posts his farming activities on his social media handles, especially Facebook, and he is quite vocal about the struggles of farmers in his locality.
Some days ago, he talked, and also posted about a situation that explains the deprivation of farmers by the political class. Here is what he said.
Just this morning, someone in the neighborhood requested to have a discussion with me.
Knowing that I'm a farmer, he enquired if I'm interested in buying fertilizers.
After asking the type of fertilizer and source, it turned out that he got the fertilizer as a beneficiary of a government empowerment program for farmers through supplied agro-inputs. A "privilege" he mentioned was facilitated by one of their Honourables.
Being an active political party member, he was amongst the selected beneficiaries given a bag of fertilizer.
Since he's not a practising farmer with no intention of using the fertilizers on any farm, he'd like to trade it off for cash.
He requested to know the market price of the fertilizer, which I told him.
I guess you can now see part of the problem. Agricultural support items meant for farmers channelled to the wrong quota.
Agricultural inputs meant for farmers delivered late. Such input materials should ideally be distributed to farmers in due quantities, before or at the beginning of the farming season (January - April).
However, at the end of the day, what you will read in the news is;
"2 million bags of Fertilizers Distributed to Nigerian farmers."
So, when they mention that over #20 billion naira was spent on fertilizers by the ministry of agriculture, it Will be difficult to challenge.
As if that wasn't disappointing enough, the man told me that if I need in large quantities he could talk to his colleagues (who're non farmers). They can supply more of such bags of fertilizers they got.
I guess you can see part of the challenges in the agricultural sector.
You can also see why food is expensive and might continue to be.
The right resources in the wrong hands, while farmers are battling tooth and nail to access essential inputs as fertilizers, agro-chemicals, tractors, funding, etc.
The essence of this post is not necessarily to seek sympathy for farmers, but sensitize the public about a reality.
The reality of hunger (present & future).
The reality to know who to hold responsible for the hunger in the land, as farmers keeps getting wrongly villified for the hike in food price.
To fix agricultural challenges, a lot have to be put in place, especially good leadership.
Good leadership to ensure good management structure.
Good management structure that can appropriately allocate resources where need be.
A management structure to ensure accountability in allocated resources.
This is one of most important ways to fix the dysfunctional and under-productive agricultural sector in Nigeria.
And that is where you and I as stakeholders come in. Ensuring we commit to processes that will provide us with good leaders at all levels.
All photos are gotten by permission the from Facebook wall of Yūsuf Sanusi