The ban on food importation
into Nigeria is no longer news; what may be news, however, is the controversy the
move by the Presidency has generated, a decision which has been rejected by
many people in the country.In addition, President Muhammadu Buhari has directed
the Central Bank of Nigeria to block food importers’ requests for foreign
currency in a bid to boost local agriculture in Africa’s most populous country.
This position and policy continued when on the assumption of office in 2015, the
President banned the use of foreign exchange to import dozens of consumable items
including but not limited to the most consumed food by the common man in
Nigeria, rice. The first reason for the restriction and ban on food importation
is that, Nigeria as a country has depended on imported products over the years
without being self-reliant on food production; secondly, whether consumable
food or not,over dependence on importation has and still continues to affect
the country economic stability,as a result, Nigeria is not able to produce basic
essential products on her own, hence the need for this policy.
As of 2019, the
estimated population of
Nigeria is over 200.96 million, ranking 7th in the world, with
the annual growth rate of 2.54%. On top of this, Nigeria is endowed with
enormous mineral and natural resources with vast land mass space adjudged to be
the most fertile and suitable for agriculture.Notwithstanding the foregoing, the
agricultural sector has experienced years of neglect as Nigeria has spent decades
relying on oil to provide needed foreign exchange and government revenues.As a
result of what has been said, Nigeria has abandoned and jettisoned the aspect
of providing adequate infrastructure, machines and equipment to be able to
increase her production level as a nation. Regardless of the aforesaid, the demand
for rice consumption is high among the Nigerian populace, particularly as the
festive period is fast approaching irrespective of their region or culture.
The Muhamadu Buhari
administration, to say the least, in my humble opinion means well for the
Nigerian economic development and growth because it tries to encourage domestic
production of food such as rice and other products. What is worrisome however
about the policy on ban, which has been criticized in many fronts is that, the
policy does not take the low capacity of local farmers into consideration
because Nigeria does produce the basic food commodities but has not been able
to singlehandedly satisfy and meet the demand of the country, hence the need
for import.
In addition to the preceding position is
the fact that the policy has brought about inflation in prices of foodstuffs and
all other essential commodities, because no adequate alternatives were made
before the ban was implemented.However,it is suffices to argue that this
present government has come to the realization that if the country continues to
import rather than export,Nigeria will run a trade deficit and the country will
not be able to create more jobs and increase wages due to the statistics been
carried out that export rather than import builds a nation’s economic output as
measured by Gross Domestic Product.
We also will see that by the policy of the
ban placed on the import of good the government will lose the tariffs attracted
to this situation which is making people see from a new perspective that if the
government is willing to take the risk of losing the revenue accruing from
importation,perhaps, the policy will really be implemented and help Nigeria
economically as a nation.
Although figures according to United Nation’s
food and Agriculture Organization has made us to see that domestic production, particularly
rice production has increased from an annual average of 7.1 million tonnes
between 2013 and 2017 to 8.9 million tonnes in 2018, however there are some
reports that rice smuggling has increased as custom officials continue to confiscate
large quantities of rice at the borders and this only implies that the Nigerian
farmers will now have to increase domestic production the more and production
of other necessities of the country like making of cloth, putting more efforts
in the planting of cotton, making of simple house use appliances so that our
import rate will not override the export rate.
The question and concern of
some people is that, will Nigerians survive and meet up their daily needsas a
result of this policy which have been implemented?My humble submission and
response to the question is in the affirmative; reason being that other advanced
economies and great countries in the world have also placed ban on things
higher than the situation Nigeriais currently experiencing,and such countries
are still surviving. Take China for example in 2017, when it decided and announced
that it will no longer recycle the world’s old plastic bottles, cardboard boxes
and so on. It triggered a global trash crisis because the trash had to go
somewhere, the search for new refuse dumps is still ongoing. “It was a huge
shock for the global recyclingindustry,”said Arnaud Brunet of the
Brussels-based Bureau of International Recycling (BIR) and in months after
China’s decision, Malaysia tripled its imports of plastic waste.
Idris Ayinde, an Agricultural economist also
commented on the issue of ban on food importation to Nigeria to the effect that:“restricting
food imports should be a gradual process since the country cannot yet meet
domestic demand for most food commodities, and the policy risks increasing food
prices inflation further.”The response from the Presidency to Ayinde’s view is
that the Buhari’s government focuseson his campaign promises on agriculture and
the betterment of the country.
In conclusion,it is
submitted that the implementation of theban on food importation policy seems not
to down too well with many Nigerians, it is suggested that Nigerians should
give space to the government and benefit of a doubt and help to stop smuggling illegal
items into the Nigerian border.It is rather a noble course if we should think
of good business ideas or solution to come up with that will help the
improvement of Nigeria domestic production and encourage the farmers rather
than complaining about them and the food items they produce to help ourselves
rise together.
OsemudiameBusayo
Pius
Department
of Mass Communication,
200 level Student, Babcock University,
llishan-Remo,
Ogun State, Nigeria.
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