by Dare Olorunfemi
According to a Yoruba dictum, when hunger is removed from poverty, the remaining features of poverty are bearable.
This saying underscores the import of hunger in defining poverty. To a great extent, one of the most unmistakable indices of poverty in any home or nation is insufficient food.
The quality of the food a people eat is a reflection of the quality of their lives.
Thus, one of the primary achievements of a man in the African setting is his ability to provide quality food for his family.
By extension, a country that is self-sufficient in food has reasons to boast in the comity of nations.
Considering the abundant agro-opportunities around the country, Nigerians have no justifiable reasons to constitute part of the over one billion people currently facing the danger of hunger across the world.
No wonder, then, that the Yar’adua administration has brought to focus the issue of food security as one of the components of the 7-point agenda in the effort to reassert Nigeria ’s status as the giant of Africa .
It is worthy of note that of all the items on the 7-point agenda, food security appears the easiest to attain, with just little co-ordinated efforts to utilize the abundant human and natural resources to reposition Nigeria on the map of the world. Most of what Nigeria needs to be a leading food producer and exporter are within her reach.
Compared with any geographical region of the world, Nigeria has one of the best climates and land resources to cultivate for consumption, exportation and industrialization a wide range of crops in which it enjoys comparative advantages.
Achieving food security in Nigerian is pivot to the success of the Yar’adua administration because this will foster the other six of the 7-point agenda. It is said that a hungry man is an angry man. An angry man is a danger to his neighbourhood and, in fact, a displeasure to himself.
Therefore, a nation with a fragile food security will have a fragile internal security, as it will breed nothing but a population of people with bottled anger, awaiting explosion.
It is a common knowledge that good food enhances immunity and good health. A well-fed child develops intellectually to justify investment in his education.
Besides the nutritional values and industrial potentialities, food is an international identity, as world-class exported food tends to become a cultural ambassador for a country and its people.
On the long run, success in food security as part of the 7-point agenda will affect other efforts to make Nigeria one of the 20 most industrialized nations in the world by the 2020.
It must be reiterated that no government in Nigeria has displayed ignorance of the possibilities of food security in national development.
Whether the policies and programmes have been mere white elephant or paper tiger, whether they are blueprint or mere political statements, whether they are genuine intentions or mere channels of siphoning public money are what Nigeria has found it difficult to give accurate definition.
However, the fact remains that the Nigerian agriculture is still too feeble to compete with the forces of nature and the dynamics of the international market.
The farmer is incompetent to contend with the challenges of the erratic climate change. Whether with too little or too much rains, the Nigerian farmer is still a loser, because he has no stabilizing factors to cope with two extremes. The farmer still largely depends on traditional implement, operated with bare hands.
The Nigerian farm is still a model of incompatible marriage between new ideas such as improved crop varieties and crude age-long working tools of bare-foot old farmer. With so many agricultural universities, faculties and research institutes, Nigeria hardly needs more paper works or theories to attain a comfortable level of food security.
Who does not know that Nigeria needs to change from manual to mechanization?
Who does not know that machine can produce better than the bare hands of the fast-aging population of the poverty-ridden rural dwellers struggling to feed over one hundred and fifty million people? Who does not know that much easier access to one-digit credit facilities will empower the Nigerian farmer to use the abundant land to produce food for local use and export?
The contradiction between what we know and what we choose do in the opposite direction is the great obstacle to attaining food security and other agenda in national development.
Source FRCN.Recorded live from the daily commentaries
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