Overview of Agriculture Policies in Nigeria and the Reasons for their Failure

In my last weblog post, we discussed the rationale behind the quest of developing countries, Nigeria inclusive, to attain sustainable economic development through economic development planning driven through industrial and agriculture policies and programmes.

Specifically, industrial economic development policies in Nigeria were discussed in the last post. We shall be dwelling more on agriculture development policies put in place in the various economic development plans in the country.

We shall consequently be concluding by advancing reasons why these plans had not achieved their objective of economic diversification and sustainable development in Nigeria.

Nigeria’s perception of the place and role of agriculture in national development changed considerably over time. Different strategies adopted by the country shows dynamism and changing strategies that overlaps and cannot be appropriately isolated into specific time period.

Often it was a combination of two or more strategies to implement agricultural development policies designed at different Nigeria national development plans.

In order to revamp the agriculture sector, the federal government had embarked on and implemented several agriculture development policies and programmes; some of which are defunct or abandoned, and some restructured while others are still in place.

These agriculture policies and programmes include the farm settlement scheme, National Accelerated Food Production (NAFPP), Agricultural Development Projects (ADPs), River Basin Development Authorities (RBDAs), National Seed Service (NSS), National Centre for Agricultural Mechanisation (NCAM), Agricultural and Rural Management Training Institute (ARMTI) and Agricultural Credit Guarantee Scheme Fund (ACGSF).

Others were the Nigerian Agricultural Cooperative And Rural Development Bank (NACRDB)/agricultural bank, Operation Feed the Nation (OFN), Green Revolution Programme, Directorate Of Foods, Roads And Rural Infrastructure (DFFRI), Nigerian agricultural insurance company (NAIC), National Agricultural Land Development Authority (NALDA), Specialised Universities for Agriculture, Root and Tuber Expansion Programme (RTEP) and rural banking scheme, etc (Salami, 2007).

Furthermore, the Federal Government in 2004 launched another economic reform called National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) programme. In the agricultural sector, NEEDS were directed to influence improvement in the production, processing and distribution of agricultural commodities. Despite all the aforementioned reform policies and programmes, the performance of the sector had not fared better than it was shortly after Nigeria independence.

According to Olayemi (1998) agricultural development strategies that have been adopted in the Nigeria can be categorised into the exploitative strategies, the agricultural project strategy, the direct government production strategy and the integrated rural development strategy.

We shall also be including the new millennium agricultural policies/programmes.

Exploitative Strategy

The Nigerian Government during the colonial period and early years of independence adopted this strategy for agricultural development. In the 1950s the traditional economists observed agricultural sector as a residual, subsistence sector made up of peasant farmers.

Myint (1958) in his “Vent-for-surplus” theory particularly categorized a developing economy as consisting of a “modern sector” that is largely non-agricultural and a “subsistence sector” that is agricultural. The subsistence sector is perceived according to this theory to be unproductive but full of underutilized resources is expected to feed the modern sectors.

One of the implications of the above theory is that, the subsistence sector was expected to be taxed to finance the modern sector. This essentially was the basis of the agricultural strategy in the 1950s and the 1960s in Nigeria where export crops were levied to provide revenue for government to develop the modern sector (Adubi 2004).

The Government established institutions such as the agricultural marketing board system to boost revenue generation efforts through taxing of peasant farmers that produce export crops such as cocoa, groundnut, palm produce, cotton, etc during this period.

Agricultural Project Strategy

The agricultural project strategy coincided with the time of internal self-government up till 1968 when government intervention in agriculture was minimal. The small-scale farmers in Nigeria bore the brunt of agricultural development efforts in Nigeria during this period (Egwu and Akubuilo, 2007).

Agriculture was seen as a sector that has appropriate linkage with other sectors and should be developed in complement with other sectors in other to effect the needed forward and backward linkages.

Agriculture policies were regionalized during this phase with the establishment of extension fields and research institutes. Regional public funds were invested in agriculture and there were new schemes such as farm settlement schemes established to create modern literate farmers and promote agricultural development. Tree crop plantations, smaller farmer credit schemes, and Agricultural Development corporation project was established to encourage development of tree crops.

Direct Government Production Strategy

This phase was merely a deepening of the process of direct government intervention and investment in agriculture. This period started in 1970 and coincided with the oil boom in Nigeria.

The over dependence and subsequent neglect of the agricultural sector in Nigeria as the result of oil boom have not augured well for the country and thus, necessitated Nigeria government as from 1975 to directly get involved in several large scale agricultural projects and specialization in production of grains, livestock, dairies, animal feed etc.

Other strategies include the establishment of Nigeria Agricultural Co-operative Bank (NACB) in 1975 when there was massive Federal Government intervention and investment in agriculture spurred majorly by the need country’s need to rehabilitate and resuscitate agriculture sector and food crisis witnessed after the civil war.

The agriculture policy during this period demanded immediate huge investments by government given that there was low capacity in the private sector. Second, the ideological imperatives in the world then favoured direct involvement of government in directing investments in agricultural business and allied activities (Adubi, 2004).

The period witnessed direct involvement of governments in directing investments in agricultural production activities and the establishment of schemes and research institutes such as National Accelerated Food Production Project (NAFPP), Nigerian Agricultural Co-operative Bank (NACB), etc.

Integrated Rural Development Strategy

The government realized in the mid-1970s that the strategy of direct agricultural production was not yielding the desired results. So, there was gradual shift to an agricultural development approach which involved the adoption of an integrated rural development strategy.

Under this strategy, rural development was seen from a holistic perspective with agricultural development problems being only part of a larger rural development concern.

This prompted the government to embark on multipurpose rural development programmes and programmes implementing institutions such as the Agricultural Development Projects (ADPs), the River Basin Development Authorities (RBDAS), the Directorate of Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure (DFRRI), the National Agricultural Land Development Agency, (NALDA), the Operation Feed the Nation (OFN), the Green Revolution (GR), etc.

It should be noted that this integrated rural development strategy was also adopted during the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) era but with significant changes in institutional design, intensity of activities and modes of operation.

The New Millennium Agricultural Policies

At the inception of the new democratic administration in May 1999 and shortly before then, several institutional changes were made in order to realize the agriculture policies objectives in line with the belief that agricultural and rural development are sin quo non for improved economic development in Nigeria and to enable the Nigerian agricultural sector respond to the imperatives of the emerging global economic order.

The institutional changes made for successful agriculture policies implementation in Nigeria during this period include the relocation of the department of co-operatives of the Ministry of Labour and its merger with the agricultural co-operatives division of the Ministry of Agriculture, the transfer of the Department of Rural Development from the Ministry of Water Resources to the Ministry of Agriculture (all before 1999).

The scrapping of the erstwhile National Agricultural Land Development Authority (NALDA) and the merging of its functions with the rural development department, the scrapping of the Federal Agricultural Co-Ordinating Unit (FACU) and the Agricultural Projects Monitoring and Evaluation Unit (APMEU) and the setting up of Projects Co-Ordinating Unit (PCU) and later transformed into the National Food Reserve Agency (NFRA).

Others include the streamlining of institutions for agricultural credit delivery with the emergence of the Nigerian Agricultural Co-Operative and Rural Development Bank (NACRDB) from the merger of the erstwhile Nigerian Agricultural and Co-Operative Bank (NACB) and the Peoples Bank and the Family Economic Advancement Programme (FEAP).

The new agricultural policy has a clear statement of objectives; the policy seeks to attain self-sustaining growth in all the agriculture sub-sectors and the structural transformation necessary for the overall socio-economic development of the country as well as the improvement in the quality of life of Nigerians.

The above policy objective reflects the current policy recognition of agriculture as a vital sector under the poverty alleviation programme in Nigeria.

The government also sought to pursue the following specific objectives in the current agriculture policy document:

i. Attainment of self-sufficiency in basic food commodities with particular reference to those which consume considerable shares of Nigeria’s foreign exchange and for which the country has comparative advantage in local production.

ii. Increase in local production of agricultural raw materials to meet the growth of an expanding industrial sector.

iii. Increase in production and processing of exportable commodities with a view to increasing their foreign exchange earning capacity and further diversifying the country’s export base and sources of foreign exchange earnings;

iv. Modernization of agricultural production, processing, storage and distribution through the infusion of improved technologies and management so that agriculture can be more responsive to the demand of other sectors of the Nigerian economy.

v. Creation of more agricultural and rural employment opportunities to increase income of farmers and rural dwellers and productively absorb an increasing labour force in the nation.

Other initiatives that were put in place and/or  to step-up agricultural development and ensure food security are the root and tuber expansion programme, national cocoa development committee, Special Programme on Food Security (SPFS) and National Fadama Project. Others also include the Fish farm estate development, initiatives for increased agricultural production, south-south cooperation initiative and Nigeria-France project on agricultural development.

This phase of agriculture development policy implementation in Nigeria witnessed a drastic reduction in food imports from 14.5% to 5% of total imports.

Presidential initiatives on specific agricultural commodities (for example cassava, rice) in order to generate N3 billion annually from exports also featured during this period. Public Private Partnership (PPP) in the development of agricultural marketing as well as the promotion of integrated rural development also marked this phase.

Reasons for the Failure of Agricultural Development Policies in Nigeria

a.      Absence of Involvement of all stakeholders: There should be proper interaction between all stakeholders both at the time of planning and implementing national agricultural programmes in the country.

Agriculturists, researchers and more importantly the farmers/rural dwellers that are normally ignored during planning and implementation of agricultural/rural development policies and programmes should all be taken on board since they are in a better position to identify the policies and programmes that will be tailored to the need of the farmers/masses.

The lack of full and non-participation of these groups of stakeholders has led to failure of intervention programmes, increased poverty and inaccessibility of basic social amenities with dwindling economic fortune and failure of agriculture policies.

b.      Weak agriculture development policies: Agricultural policies should be specific and spelt out for the masses and the world to know.

Also a policy should have strategy, targets, goals, specific objectives and most importantly programmes or projects geared toward their accomplishment.

c.         Short duration of agriculture development policies: There should be continuity of and perpetual implementation of agriculture development policies by incumbent and new administration for the impact of the policies to be felt on Nigeria economy.

d.         Inconsistency of regional agriculture development policies with the national policies: New agriculture policies and programmes should be consistent, work in harmony and closely with state and national policies and programmes.

The good relationship and peaceful atmosphere will always ensure success of agricultural policies and programme and consequent agricultural development.

e.         Inadequate monitoring and evaluation of programmes: Evaluation is purposely done to determine achievements of rural/agriculture development programmes vis-a-vis the set policy objectives.

Evaluation techniques can serve to improve implementation and efficiency of agriculture development programmes after interventions have begun, provide evidence as to the cost efficiency and impact of a specific intervention within and between policy sectors (FAO, 2004).

Conclusion

The past national agriculture development policies/programmes have failed to improve standard of living of millions of Nigeria and economic development of the country.

To realize the objective of sustainable economic development in Nigeria, the reasons enumerated here as responsible for the failure of agriculture development policies/programmes in Nigeria need to be address, else every “good policy” prescription designed for implementation will result to failure.

References

Adubi AA (2004). “Agriculture: Its performance, problems and prospects”. Democratic    Government

Development. In Bello Imam I. B. and M. I. Obadan (Ed). Management in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic 1999–2003 CLGARDS, 2004.

Egwu WE, and Akubuilo CJC (2007). “Agricultural Policy, Development and Implementation in Agricultural Economics and Extension.

Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), (2004). TheEthics of Sustainable Agricultural Intensification. FAO Rome, Italy (www/fao,org: Editional Production and Design Group           Publishing Management).

Olayemi JK (1998). “Agricultural Development Strategy: Institutional Framework and Support,   “Paper presented at the workshop on Policy Issues and Planning in the Agricultural   Sector, NCEMA, June 15-26, 1998.