- Nigeria’s rice industry needs time and sweat to grow
Nigeria seems in a great hurry to achieve sufficiency in rice production and wisely so we might add. Her current demand as at May this year stood at 6.7 million tons according to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). This comes to humongous number if we reckon with the $5 million per day rice import bill incurred by Nigeria according to Audu Ogbeh, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development.
Considering the huge foreign exchange loss, self-sufficiency and even export of this national staple is imperative. Since 2012, successive Nigeria’s governments have made spirited attempts to conquer the rice goblin with very little impact. The first deadline for complete stoppage of importation was 2015. But that date turned out a joke as no dent was made on the imported variety.
Again, 2017 was set and yet again, it turned out a mirage, only for it to be to be shifted to this current year-end.
But hardly had 2018 ended than the USDA handed a most confounding and damning report concerning Nigeria’s rice situation. USDA reported that Nigeria is importing even more rice than ever, notwithstanding her spirited efforts at local production. “Nigeria’s rice imports will jump 13 percent next year to 3.5 million metric tons, making Africa’s most populous country the world’s biggest rice importer after China,” says USDA.
But Ogbeh who had said early in the year that the country had so much harvest it was faced with a problem of bagging has been much discomfited by this report. He described it as ‘mischief’, saying there had not been any officially approved importation of rice into the country this year.
“After that report I went to the CBN (Central Bank of Nigeria) and I met with the governor… and asked him how many Letters of Credit (LCs) they have opened this year for rice importation and he said ‘not one’, and you can ask the CBN governor,” Ogbeh said.
The minister agreed that the rate of smuggling may still be quite high but nowhere near the USDA figures.
But we thought that Minister Ogbeh ought to be alarmed that no single bag of rice had come into Nigeria through the official channels for a country of Nigeria’s size that imported massively. Though land borders have been opened for importation, the bulk of the commodity in Nigeria is smuggled. The Nigeria Customs Service is at once overwhelmed and perhaps secretly thankful at the good fortune providence has spoiled it with.
The ports of Cotonou, the capital of neighbouring Benin Republic, are sustained by rice and used vehicles meant for Nigeria. This is common knowledge and has been an age-old practice. Besides, smuggling has become super lucrative since official duty and tariff by Nigeria aggregates to about 70 percent while it is as low as 15 percent in the countries bordering Nigeria.
Further, a cursory survey of the major rice markets in Nigeria shows that about 90 percent of the available commodity is imported long grain rice. Another check: most social events, eateries and even homes serve imported rice.
Apart from not being commonly available in major cities, local rice is still considered to be of low quality, not completely de-stoned and tellingly, more expensive than the imported variant. There is also the question of taste: Nigerians have become used to the imported long grain rice in the last four to five decades.
The imported long grain variety was initially a status symbol then it became the acceptable rice standard for all. Local rice was therefore long jettisoned while rice farming in Nigeria over these long decades became subsistent, primitive and unsustainable.
In the last one decade, successive governments have awoken to the need to reverse the pernicious effect of the imported rice staple on Nigeria’s economy. Policies have been drawn, investments are being made in vast, mechanized paddy farms and large modern mills.
But reversing an almost five decades-old aberration would require some time and a lot of work. Seeking to achieve self-sufficiency in rice production in just a few years suggests that government does not appreciate the magnitude of the challenge.
To roll back the lost years will take at least a couple of decades of sustained investment, mechanization, reorientation of the populace’ taste buds, an overall development of the rice value chain and indeed industry. We are looking at a minimum of 20-years of sustained work and vision.
