PFI And The Road To Food Security
By James Hughes
The failure of government to create the fertile environment and put forward the enabling policy regime capable of catalyzing development has variously been blamed for the slow responses of the Nigerian economy to development. Where there existed policy regimes, what most people see are weaknesses in the area of political will necessary to give teeth to fruitful implementation.The same may not be the case with the Presidential Fertiliser Initiative (PFI), a programme initiated by the President Buhari administration with the primary aim to boost local capacity in fertiliser production as a means of giving impetus to food production and employment generation.Used to poor policy implementation for many years, Nigerians were not quick to embrace the Presidential Fertilizer Initiative. An announcement that the policy was going to lead to a drop in the prices of fertilizers, a critical input needed for improved food production, was not enough to stir optimism and the reason is not farfetched.The first reason is the historical tendency of prices of goods and services never dropping any time it goes up. Secondly, the Growth Enhancement Scheme (GES) programme of the last administration was also not able to make fertiliser either available or affordable. Matter of fact, the GES programme was trailed by allegations of hijack by political jobbers who ended up selling the input at prices beyond the reach of ordinary farmers.Used to poor policy implementation for many years, Nigerians were not quick to embrace the Presidential Fertilizer Initiative. An announcement that the policy was going to lead to a drop in the prices of fertilizers, a critical input needed for improved food production, was not enough to stir optimism and the reason is not far fetchedSo far, the PFI programme has been steered away from the familiar challenges of government initiatives. Players in the agricultural sector are unanimous in their view that since the introduction of the programme late into the 2017 farming season, most Nigerian farmers have not complained of the non-availability of fertilizer in the country. In addition to this, there is growing optimism that the food crises that struck the country in 2016 as a result of drop in the value of the dollar exchange rate of the naira from N192 to N362might pave way for self-sufficiency in food production. According to Thomas Etuh, president, Fertilizer Producers and Suppliers Association of Nigeria (FEPSAN), the PFI programme has potential to solve, in less than three year, most of the food security challenges Nigeria has been facing for many years.“In three years time, I am certain that Nigeria will be self-sufficient in most staple foods because agriculture will regain its position as the biggest employer of labour in Nigeria. I am also convinced that with the ramp up in food production, processing industries will begin to spring up, taking off the excesses from the farmers, employing even a larger number of people and packaging Nigerian agro produce for exports,” said Etuh, himself a major player in fertilizer and agro inputs business in Nigeria.The optimism shared by the may have had its basis from the increasing number of fertilizer blending plants springing up across the country but its validity is better tested when placed against recent statistics from the International Fertilizer Development Centre (IFDC) which stated that fertilizer consumption in Nigeria spiked by a significant 63 percent in 2007, the same year the PFI programme was formally launched, rising from 959,000 metric tonnes in 2016 to 1.6 million metric tonnes in 2017.This clearly suggests a spike of activities in the food production sector. For an economy whose population is expected to be the third largest in the world by 2050, according to the United Nations Department for Economic and Social Affairs, there is urgent need to reverse a significant resource energy towards boosting food production. This becomes very urgent when viewed against the backdrop of the more than N43 trillion the country was said to have spent in the importation of food between for the six year period between 2010 and 2016.Speaking at the 15th National Council of Science and Technology with in Benin City,in December 2017, Minister of Science and Technology, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu said the huge resources spent on the importation of goods and services was the result of negligence by the country to invest in research and technology, adding that nations that have attained greatness have always been known for their investment in home-grown solutions to a lot of challenges.Onu may have spoken about science and technology but prevailing realities point more towards harnessing national energy towards ensuring that the country was capable of feeding its population, with the hope and expectation that there would be the surplus will naturally generate an industry that will attract a scientific approach to food production, storage and preservation as the country continues to dream of food security. In truth, the pessimism that greeted the approach by most Nigerians to the Presidential Fertilizer Initiative has yielded to optimism. When the programme was launched in the first quarter of 2017, there were 11 moribund local fertiliser blending plants that agreed to be a part of the scheme. It was these 11 plants that transformed the hitherto intractable difficulty in accessing fertiliser to opportunities for local growth, throwing up a number of industries along its path.By June 2018, reports indicate that these plants have grown from 11 to 18, evenly spread across the country, with a number of others looking to also join the programme. That most of these fertiliser blending plants had been closed for more than 10 years speaks of what could happen when government shows the political will to partner the private sector towards economic growth and development. According to Uche Orji, managing director of the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA), government can only succeed in stimulating growth and profitability in businesses when it has the requisite political will and deploys competent people to man various layers of the policy execution process. Citing the examples of Ethiopian Airlines and Keya Airways, Orji stated that governments have not always failed in businesses.“Public-Private Partnership will work if you put the right people there. Government needs to pick the right partners and those who are fully committed to any of its initiatives. In the case of the PFI programme, I don’t want to blow our trumpet but I believe the model can be replicated in other sectors with right management and it would work,” he stated in an interview.Less than two years into the PFI programme, measurable successes have been recorded. At the onset, it was projected that by stimulating the manufacture of fertiliser in Nigeria, the country was going to be saving an estimated $200 million in foreign exchange that would otherwise be utilised in the importation of the agro input. There was also this other N60 billion estimated to be the savings from annual subsidies for fertiliser.The beauty of this is not just that the country was saving money and boosting local capacity but also in the fact that the fraud that had been prevalent in the country’s fertiliser subsidies regime was also eliminated by a single programme. Before the PFI programme, there were allegations that a lot of briefcase businessmen and politicians made entries for tonnes of purportedly imported fertiliser and made away with huge sums of money for products that were never imported. In addition to these, reports across the industry indicate that the PFI programme has also stirred activities across the value chain.Farmers are said to be growing more, especially because they now pay a significantly lowered price of N5,500 for a bag of fertiliser, down from N11,000 before the programme. Close watcher also point to increased activities in the printing and logistics sectors. According to the NSIA chief executive, there were 17,000 truck movements for the PFI programme during the 2017 farming season, a development that generated huge income for the players and reduced idle time for truckers.In the area of unemployment, eneration, the local manufacture of fertiliser was reported to have generated over 250,000 jobs, a figure that is expected to grow even higher with more blending plants joining the programme and an increased number of Nigerians taking to farming as a result of the availability of quality fertilisers in the country.Cynical about the potential successes of public and private partnerships, Nigerians who did not give the Presidential Fertiliser Initiative (PFI) any chance for success are having a rethink following the immediate impact it has had on agricultural revival. CHIKA IZUORA writes.
The PFI presents a good example for Nigeria’s economic renaissance through public and private partnerships and according to Valentine Nwandu, managing director, Tak Continental Group, it is a “sign that things can work in this country with the right leadership and commitment.” Nwandu noted that to sustain the success and spread it to other sectors, it is important to mobilise the private sector, while government takes the lead in negotiating incentives and making the environment right and ripe for initiatives such as the PFI to thrive.
Source: leadership.ngDiscover more from NewsBreakers
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