Posted by From GODDY OSUJI Abakaliki on
As the world groan under hard times thrown up by food crisis, the Chairman of Abakaliki Rice-mill Association, Chief Vincent Nwibo, is not moved neither does he pity Nigeria.
As the world groan under hard times thrown up by food crisis, the Chairman of Abakaliki Rice-mill Association, Chief Vincent Nwibo, is not moved neither does he pity Nigeria. For him, Nigerians are just paying a price for neglecting agriculture, especially rice production in the country.
In an interview with Daily Sun in Abakaliki, Nwibo was bitter that "the country and the people because of oil have neglected agriculture."
He was equally angry that when you visit the villages only old people are seen going to the farm just as farmers are not regarded in the society.
Neglect of agriculture
But if you are a politician or big time businessman, whether you stole the money or the money comes around, people will call you and give you chieftaincy title.
The crisis is as a result of people neglecting agriculture for a long time and you know that the crisis is worldwide, not only in Nigeria, and it is good as it sounds a warning to us of what will happen in future if we keep on neglecting agriculture.
So, what I am saying is that this issue of importing rice is a short time measure, a long time measure is to go back to agriculture. In the oldend ays during the colonial era, we used to hear of the groundnut pyramid in the North, hide and skin, the palm-oil in the East, but now you don't see those things again, where have they gone?
When Dr. M I Okpara embarked on palm and cashew plantations he had the foresight that the population was growing and had more mouths to feed, so he prepared for it. You cannot eat oil; we have the land to farm. So, what I am saying is that whether the Federal Government is importing rice or not, we cannot continue to import. And some of the producing countries have refused to allow us import rice from their countries and the naira/dollar equivalent is not so chep that makes it easy to import rice, but if you plant food within your vicinity just as we have enough land to cultivate we will have enough food.
Abakiliki rice
Yes, Abakiliki has enough rice to feed the country if we are helped. In my last interview I gave conditions that we should embark onirrigation farming. If the government plans irrigation system where you farm three times a year, because given that rice is a cereal, in advanced countries they cultivate it three times a year giving instances that if you have a portion of land that can take two tons of rice, here you plant it only once but in advanced countries using irrigaiton system, they plant three times on the same portion of land.
But Abakaliki is doing their best because most of these things are locally done. And the cost of importation is very high; cost of chemicals also very high, government has to do something about it.
Even when the Federal Government promised to subsidize these things, let them implement it because this planting season, if you fail to provide something that should be used in April/May in September/October it serves no purpose to the farmer.
Rice processing
When you talk about rice processing there are stages; small-scale, big scale, complex mill. We don't have such complex mills in Abakaliki here. If you go to Markudi, Benue State, you have a complex mill built by the state government. They leased it out. That mill can parboil, de-stone and polish at a straight, but what we have here; we have a different machine that will mill it and we go to a different machine that de-stones it. What we don't have here is polisher.
There is a complex mill in advanced countries that can mill, de-stone and polish at the same time and even separate them into different colours. In advanced countries, they install it and lease it out to farmers for a period of years to run it. The problem here is that first and foremost there is no light here at the Abaaliki rice mill complex. They should put all these rudimentary things on the ground first. There should be power here, there should be water here because you cannot process rice without water. There should be modern buildings.
This rice mill is owned by individuals, government has no hands in it. Government should come and encourage people, by then you start to talk of getting loans, going to some industries and how they should sponsor you. Those basic things supposed to be here first.