Food security refers to the situation when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and preferences for an active and healthy lifestyle. Food security is a state in which food is quantitatively and qualitatively available, accessible, and affordable to meet the nutritional needs of the people over a given period. People are food-secured when they have physical and economic access to enough food for active and healthy living. Therefore, food security for people in a community, state, or nation is entrenched in four pillars: quantitative, qualitative, accessibility, and time. The difficulty of attaining food security surges with increased population and economic meltdown, making achieving food security in Nigeria arduous. What has been the food security situation in Nigeria?
Browsing: Prof. M.K. Othman
Agriculturally, Kano has been a lucky state. Four decades ago, a non-nonsense and visionary Governor, Police commissioner Audu Bako of blessed memory, built a multi-million Naira Tiga dam with a capacity of 1.9 billion cubic meters of water through direct labor. Then, it was the biggest dam in Nigeria. The dam was built to irrigate 64,000 hectares of land and supply water to several communities. In addition to the Tiga Dam, Audu Bako equally built the Thomas Dambatta and Minjibir dams, irrigation schemes, and the Kafin Chiri dam. A decade later, under the democratic dispensation, another visionary governor, the charismatic Abubakar Rimi, emerged with an unsatiable appetite for developing agriculture and rural development. He built over ten dams across Kano State, and four of such dams are located along Dayi – Gwarzo – Kano Road, which is evidence of his excellent stewardship. Still, in the early 1990s, when some states with privileged information of Sasakawa Global 2000 (SG 2000) entry into Nigeria were foot-dragging to host SG 2000, Kano state went the extra mile and courted to accommodate and partner with it. That made Kano state the first beneficiary of SG 2000 interventions in Nigeria.
Even Zulum’s staunchest enemies cannot but agree with the facts that Borno state and, indeed, other states in Nigeria have never experienced remarkable, comprehensive, and significant progress in all aspects of human life and infrastructure similar to the feats recorded in five years of governor Babagana Umara Zulum in Borno State. The recording continues for the next three years.
At the 2013 Annual Conference of Nigerian Institution of Agricultural Engineers (NIAE) held in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, an amiable personality with a giant physique and business-like character approached me at the registration center to register some agricultural engineering graduates into the NIAE membership fold. It turned out that, a mentor was leading mentees and initiating them into the realm of professionalism. My immediate impression was a warm jovial and pleasant interaction that symbolizes respect, loyalty, trust that exemplifies a leader and the led relationship. Later, I realized that, I came into contact with the Rector of Ramat Polytechnic, Maiduguri, and the graduates were the lecturers of the polytechnic whom he led to their first-time participation in the NIAE conference. Going forward, I discovered that the Rector was Professor Babagana Umara Zulum.
The economy is the second sector receiving priority attention, which interrelates and intertwines with security. Economic activities are primarily agricultural in rural communities, which revolve around the crops-livestock interface as a significant source of livelihood for the people. The rural economy provides food, feed, fodder, and industrial raw materials that give an income stream to the citizens.
Aspiring to a leadership position is one thing, being at the top is another; they are simply two different scenarios. In the aspiration stage, dreams and fantasies permeate the thought process and produce both workable and seemingly unworkable ideas, making decisions and reasons for action quite difficult. Once one reaches the leadership position, reality brings stresses, challenges, painful choices, and controversial decisions and actions from which problem-solving mechanisms emerge. This puts a new leader in a difficult situation: having to meet the demands and expectations of diverse groups of people. The people are diverse. From those who have secretly opposed the leader’s goals to those who have helped him achieve them, they will flood him with a sea of demands that may be impossible to meet. Without strategic thinking, this problematic situation can prevent the leader from achieving his or her desired goal of serving people. From a strategic perspective, a leader must identify the tasks and those who could take on those tasks. A leader must beware of political paternalism that results in putting a round peg in a square hole, because the job can never get done that way. Therefore, a leader must recruit talent from within and outside the political arena to build a high-performing team. He must gather the best minds and assemble a team to accomplish the task before him – good governance, integrity and accountability as embodied in the true democratic ethos. In this regard, the less than 200 days that Dr. Dikko Umar Radda has spent as Governor of Katsina State is on my radar as an interested stakeholder who is keenly interested in addressing the challenges, rapid progress and development of Katsina State. Dikko, the 4th civilian governor under the current political leadership, inherited a basket of problems and challenges as if they came out of Pandora’s box. At his inauguration, Dr. Dikko pledged to the good people of Katsina State that they would not regret putting their trust in him.
I am resuming this piece with a quote from Hajia Naja’atu Mohammed who addressed the students of great ABU Zaria recently. She said, “The easiest way to destroy a nation is to withdraw education.” I must add withdrawing or denying university education to the citizenry is tantamount to catastrophic and systematic annihilation of society. Conversely, revitalization of the university education is methodological treatment of societal ailments, just like the emphasis of university education in the song of Aminu Alan waka “idan ta gyaru, al’uma ta gyaru”. Education is not only a fundamental human right but a moral obligation to the leaders – democratically elected or autocratically anointed; otherwise, the consequences of ignorance would consume both the leaders and the led.
The Strike by the Nigerian Labour Congress and the Trade Union Congress set for this week has been postponed. The labour unions were ready to go on unlimited strike following the inability or unwillingness of the Government to introduce significant palliatives that would assuage the intense suffering of workers confronted by a cost of living crisis that has made feeding, transport, medical care, etc. almost impossible for the working class. When I listened to President Tinubu’s Independence Day address, the main message I heard was that he is aware of the suffering of the people and is acting to address it. What workers are saying is that they do not see any evidence yet of what is being done to alleviate their suffering. It is not clear what deal was done with the labour aristocrats leading the unions to stop the strike for the moment but the reality is that if the cost of living crisis is not addressed in a substantive way very soon, the explosion would be coming and it may not even be from wage earners. The World Bank says say that only 12% of the working class earn a formal wage in Nigeria. The vast majority are farmers or informal workers who have no unions, voice, or structure to articulate their interests and they are even more affected by the cost of living crisis.
The popular view among stakeholders that IPPIS is killing the Nigerian University System is fait accompli. IPPIS stands for Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS). It is a payment platform of personnel emolument, which the Federal Government of Nigeria adopted over ten years ago to flush out ghost workers, enhance efficiency, and address the corrupt practices related to salary payments in the public sector. Have these three objectives been achieved – ghost workers removal from payrolls, efficiency enhancement, and blocking leakages? It has indeed achieved the opposite. The truth is those who were immensely corrupt are the same people at the center of IPPIS operation, a case of a thief hired to guard a property.
Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina is a man of so many outstanding parts – an academic, banker, investment and development expert, diplomat, visionary leader, technocrat, mentor, team player/builder/leader, boardroom guru, political economist par excellence, agricultural expert, farmers’ minister, an icon of corporate world, a private sector mover, the African development icon, the African development czar, a sage tearing away from the crowd and a potential Novel Peace Prize Winner.