A former Special Adviser to ex-president Muhammadu Buhari on agriculture, Dolapo Bright, has said that President Bola Tinubu was misled by his advisers that the suspension of duties, tariffs, and taxes on the importation of food staples through land and sea borders would reduce inflation.
Bright was a guest on Sunday’s edition of Inside Sources with Laolu Akande, a socio-political programme aired on Channels Television. He said the rise in the cost of diesel and petrol which are essential to the transportation of food items have grossly affected the prices of commodities.
He said, “I don’t think it happened. The person who advised the government to do that, the person is clueless, if you understand what is happening, you won’t give such advice. The person is misleading the president. Do you know why? Let’s assume that you are going to import. Importation is going to be into Lagos. Are you not going to transport the thing to other states? It doesn’t make sense because that is going to make our agriculture stagnant.”
Food and commodity inflation have skyrocketed as Nigerians battle what can pass for the worst cost of living crisis since the country’s independence over six decades ago.
When Tinubu was sworn in as president in May 2023, Nigeria’s inflation rate was 22.41%, according to official numbers by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). The inflation rate rose astronomically to 34.6% in November 2024, more than 12% higher, a development that economic wizards have attributed to Tinubu’s twin policies of petrol subsidy removal and unification of the forex rates.
Significantly, the food inflation rate in November 2024 was 39.93% on a year-on-year basis, from 32.84% recorded in November 2023. The rise in food inflation is attributed to the rate of increase in the average prices of fish, rice, yam flour, millet whole grain, corn flour, egg, milk, milk, frozen chicken, among others.
To stem food inflation, the Tinubu administration in July 2024 announced the suspension of customs duties on imported food items but the policy has reportedly not seen the light of the day due to bureaucratic bottlenecks.
Bright, who was Buhari’s aide on agriculture from 2015 to 2023, said the government has been partly responsible for inflation because the administration is trying to sit on the driver’s side of agriculture instead of allowing the private sector to do so.
He said farmers won’t necessarily need the government’s intervention if the right environment is set for them to make a decent profit.
“A lot of farmers are not producing the capacity they were producing before because of high input costs,” he said, blaming the cost of diesel and petrol which he said significantly affect harvests.
On December 23, 2024, during his maiden chat, Tinubu said he has “over 2,000 tractors coming into this country for mechanised farming” to make farming sexier.
However, Bright said tractors only won’t solve the food shortage problem in Nigeria. He argued that using local labour is job creation for locals and that over 80% of farmers in Nigeria are into subsistence farming.
The former presidential aide said, “When I heard about tractors and all those things, I laughed. The government is not getting it. Tractors won’t solve our problem. Mechanised farming to do what?
“We are having low harvest in terms of poor input, poor seed; we don’t have sovereignty of seeds — all the seeds we use in Nigeria are almost imported. All of these problems are there and we are going to use tractors.
“At the end of the day, what are we going to get? We are going to get peanuts. It is going to be very far from the potential. It is going to give us more problems because no one will be responsible for the maintenance. Corporate farmers can afford to get bank loans but smallholder farmers can’t afford to get bank loans to afford the use of tractors for mechanised farming.”
The former presidential aide said Nigeria can’t afford to be a mass producer of food as the country indirectly feeds neighbouring countries like Niger Republic, Benin, Burkina Faso, and others.
“Agriculture is supposed to be a serious priority of government because it is connected to security. The rural areas, if they are suffering, we are not secure. That is part of the reasons we have banditry, Boko Haram and all. If the people are satisfied, will they follow Boko Haram?” he queried.
