Agriculture

Songhai: Creating World Class Farmers In Bunu Tai

Published

12 years ago

September 5, 2012

Any time government moves into any community with intent to acquire land for people-orientated projects, the host communities focus attention on what they stands to gain in such ventures.

So for the people of Bunu, in the Tai local government area of Rivers State, the scenario was no different when the Rivers State government acquired more than 300 hectres of their land for the now famous Songhai Rivers Initiative Farm.

The programme was conceived after the State Governor, Rt. Hon Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi visited the Songhai Centre in Porto Novo in nearby Benin Republic and was impressed with what he saw as a good model in agriculture development in Africa and decided to replicate same in the state.

Believed to be about 20 times the size of that in Benin Republic, the farm according to the initiators would provide the opportunity to train young Rivers men and women in new farming methods.

It was expected that the project when fully operational would check the poor farm produce resulting from obsolete farming methods and replacing them with modern innovative technologies in agriculture business.

According to the founder of Songhai International Centre, Porto Novo, Benin Republic, Father Godfrey Nzamujo, “Songhai is an extention space that produces functional individuals. He said sustainable agriculture could become a weapon of mass construction.

Before work actually began at the Rivers farm in 2010, according to records, a group of 105 young Rivers men and women from the 23 local government areas had been sent to Songhai International Centre for an 18 months training in various specialized agric and agro based areas. Fifty of them, it was gathered were already deployed to form part of the first corps of workers.

In addition, they were made to imbibe an entrepreneurial culture with an opportunity to drive their own farm units and eventually progress to start their own businesses in their respective communities with the support of the centre.

Of course such ventures are not without objectives. These objectives include the provision of skills for the unemployed youths of Rivers State, development of human capacities for empowerment of individuals and groups and broadening of the socio-economic band width in the region and most importantly to reversing rural-urban immigration among others.

The question then arises, has the youths from the host community availed themselves of the opportunities of becoming business farmers as offered by the presence of Songhai and if so to what extent?

What efforts has the Songhai management made to make agriculture and particularly farming, a technology based venture that could be attractive to the youth and even the unemployed graduates and make them avail themselves of the opportunity offered by Songhai through the instrumentality of the Rivers State Sustainable Development Agency (RSSDA) to become big time business framers not only in their community but beyond.

According to the communications officer of Songhai, Mr Gabriel Epelle, before Songhai Rivers Development Initiative – (SRDI) even moved to Bunu community, it was not unmindful of her social responsibility role.

“If you talk about expectations, you talk about employment, scholarship and all these boil down to corporate social responsibility” he said.

According to him, the SRDI has been on top of the game and most of the people doing one thing or the other in Songhai were from Bunu Tai. “when we talk about employment at management level, we may not have met the community’s expectation but when you talk about labour and people that work and get their wages immediately we talk about them”, he revealed.

He said it was important to note that Songhai was not stopping at that stage and the fact that they just began operations barely two years ago and to have employed a good number of the community people speaks volumes.

According to the Communications Officer, Songhai attaches much importance to training during the first phase of its operations that was why such programmes were being pursued with passion.

He explained that in whatever capacity the people were employed, training took top priority.

He said the training process includes skills and techniques which Songhai has been applying with much successes since it inception. The system, he said, has helped fertilise farmlands as much as fertiliser.

“We teach them how to recycle things that are considered to be waste to enable them apply them into their practice” it is a process whereby what is considered to be waste is used like the food we eat and the crumbs, instead of disposing them, you bring them back, you keep them, use them and create what we call mug guttery which you use to feed the fish”, he said.

Epelle stated that a lot of money has been saved through such skills and that the normal feeds cost more to procure, adding that the innovation has benefitted the community.

According to him, agriculture on its own could not succeed without the application of compost and that Songhai has successfully taught the people the act of preparing the product.

He said the primary role of Songhai for now was the proper acquisition of the various skills by the people to enable them become the main hub were different individuals and groups would come and learn the skills.

While calling on the indigenes to look beyond top level employment in Songhai for the moment he said that there has been a great change in the community since the inception of Songhai there.

He stated that if the skills developed by Songhai were present before and after the discovery of oil, we could not have relegated agriculture to the background as it is today.

For the paramount ruler of Bunu Tai Community, Chief T. L. K. Oebere, the presence of Songhai in his community was a welcome development.

“Infact let me say they are welcome, yes because from the time they Songhai entered, we’ve not got any quarrel with them”, he said.

Chief Oebere who spoke from his sick bed in his palace, explained that it was too early to expect much from Songhai as it was just two years old in his community.

“Well I cannot critisise them now because they have not stayed here for long. “But what is there is that they are doing fine with us, they are helping my boys, my women and my other inhabitants here because we have to work with them and if we want anything from them they do it”.

He said although the presence of electricity in the community did not begin with Songhai he was of the opinion that their presence has helped maintain power.

On employment, Chief Oebere said the community was bidding its time in terms of management level positions for indigenes given that no big company has come to their community before and that one cannot state that school to land was better than Songhai so far.

While corroborating some of the views expressed by Chief Oebere, Chiefs T. S. Kabari, Israel Agbolo, Prince Oebere, and Bale Joseph expressed the hope that the presence of Songhai would in the long run positively affect the lives of their people while calling on the state government to remember them in the scheme of things.

They expressed their support for Songhai for a smooth operation as no meaningful progress would be made if there was not peace.

They further called on the state government to name the Songhai farm after its community just as it was being done in Omagwa where we have the International Airport, and that the sign post should read Songhai Farm, Bunu Town and not Bunu Tai.

However, for soft spoken Emmanuel Lebete, the Youth Leader of the Community, “our people are not at loggerheads with Songhai”.

According to him, “problem we have with the establishment of Songhai was a minor one”.

He acknowledged that some of the people especially the women folk lacked land to farm on but added quickly that it was a matter which the state governor, Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi and the community would settle amicably.

The youth leader who described governor Amaechi as a humble and listening man said the community would give the Songhai venture all the support it deserves to enable the people benefit from the various agricultural training programmes which have been on ground since the inception of the agric outfit to enable his people benefit maximally.

On the contention issue of employment, Lebete said they were watching closely as things unfold saying that “if they liaise with us in fact the community is not against anything development so we want the management of Songhai not to take certain things for granted on their own” he said.

“We are a peace loving community”, Lebete explained saying that the community would not engage in violent activities to undermine the smooth running of Songhai.

He said that the youth as a whole listen to every advice from the chiefs and elders and that there has not been any time they ever considered violence as a resort rather “we believe in peaceful dialogue”.

However, for any close watchers of Songhai and its activities for the past two years, it would be stating the obvious to say that the Songhai Rivers Initiative has been on the forefront in the development of agriculture skills and so it behoves the people of the area to avail themselves of the ample opportunity.

Infact, the chiefs, elders, youths and the generality of the people should look beyond top management employment for now and strive to make their community the hub of what Songhai had from inception, that is, the assimilation of farming skills and techniques to enable them become business farmers.

Infact posterity would not forgive Bunu community if they let this opportunity pass them by because it was becoming clearer by the day that outsiders might take advantage of the benefits of the various training programmes put in place by the Songhai management in the past two years.

Why the so called developed countries of the world pride themselves as leaders was not because of technological knowledge alone but because they were able to feed their citizens and even donate to the less privileged ones across the globe in times of need and this alone should be enough food for thought for the Bunu Tai people in particular and Rivers State as a whole.

Agriculture

Nigeria’s Agric Exports Face Rejections Overseas

Published

1 month ago

March 15, 2024

The Tide

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) says Nigeria has lost its leading position in the agriculture export markets because its agricultural commodities do not meet the sanitary and phytosanitary requirements of the foreign markets.
According to WTO, despite the abundance of arable lands and increased investments, the nation has transitioned into a net importer of farm produce that was previously cultivated domestically, undermining efforts aimed at ensuring food sustainability.
The Director-General, WTO, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, disclosed this in Abuja at the launch of seven trade support programmes initiated by the WTO-ITC to boost the development of Nigeria’s trade and industry standards.
The initiatives, namely the Standards Trade Development Facility, Digital Trade Initiative support, Women Exporters Entrepreneurship support, National Trade Portal and cotton development initiative, aim to provide technical support to strengthen food safety, animal and plant health capacity in developing countries, address challenges of e-commerce digital trade divide and establish a world-class technology centre for all trade-related data and information in Nigeria.
“We are launching today with STDF, ITC, and the NEPC, a project to help with international safety and quality certification for sesame and cowpeas or black-eyed peas.
“The agriculture sector in Nigeria has the potential to be a major driver of export diversification and job creation, but too much of this potential remains unrealized, due to a variety of barriers.
“In fact, Nigeria has not only lost out in agricultural export markets, it is a net food importer spending about billions a year on goods, many of which we can also produce here.
“Some of Nigeria’s unrealised potential has to do with trade-related problems on the supply side, and that is what this project is seeking to rectify”, the WTO DG stated.
Specifically, she said Nigerian cowpea and sesame exports were increasingly facing rejections in several destination markets due to non-compliance with international SPS requirements.
According to her, the failure to comply with regional, global and import country sanitary and phytosanitary standards has resulted in loss of sales, revenue, and hard currency due to export rejects.
Last week, the former Finance Minister charged Nigeria and other African countries to improve the quality of their shea exports to international standards.
She added, “Nigeria is the world’s largest producer and consumer of cowpeas. Sesame is primarily an export crop, and Nigeria is the world’s fourth leading producer, exporting to the EU, Türkiye, Japan, South Korea and other Asian markets.
“However, Nigerian cowpea and sesame exports have increasingly faced rejections in several destination markets due to non-compliance with international SPS requirements”.
She said for example, “Nigeria accounts for over a third of Japan’s sesame imports, but health and safety inspections during the past few years have found instances where pesticide residue levels were nearly double the maximum residue limits permissible from 2019 to 2021″.
Hence to tackle the challenges, Okonjo-Iweala said the WTO was partnering with relevant stakeholders to build the capacities of stakeholders across the sesame and cowpeas value chains to better understand market access requirements and improved agricultural practices such as pesticide application, hygiene techniques, harvest and post-harvest methods, and food safety.
She said the project, which would be implemented with $1.2mn funding, would improve the country’s non-oil export.
On her part, the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Doris Aniete, said the Ministry was putting in place policies and mechanisms that would facilitate and enhance trade, while also removing all the bottlenecks hampering trade and investment.
She further stated that the Ministry had started rolling out the N50bn Presidential Conditional Grant Scheme through the Bank of Industry, targeting various economic players.
She added that a N150bn intervention through the FGN MSME and Manufacturing Sector Fund, providing low-interest loans that are pivotal for scaling businesses and spurring job creation would commence very soon.
“We are achieving this by facilitating a strong enabling environment for businesses to thrive, developing robust policies and reforms, increasing access to financing, widening access to global markets, driving investments, and creating job opportunities, all in line with the vision of Mr President.
“In 2024 we are focused on improving infrastructural capacity such as power and transport, as well as soft infrastructure such as transparent regulation, policy consistency, the rule of law, and a culture of efficient collaboration and synergy among various government agencies and offices.
“We believe this will facilitate an environment where business operations are not hindered by red tape but can continue to thrive”.
Also speaking, the Executive Director of the Nigerian Export Promotion Council, Nonye Ayeni, explained that the project, expected to last for three years, would enhance the quality and standard of sesame and cowpea through the institution of good Sanitary and Phyto-sanitary conducts.
She disclosed that in 2022, the worldwide value of sesame exports and its value chain amounted to $7.35bn, projected to surge to $9.27bn by 2032. Similarly cowpeas were valued at $7.2bn in 2023, with an anticipated rise to $9.43bn by 2028.
“This project, STDF 845, will therefore enhance the quality and standard of sesame and cowpea through the institution of good Sanitary and Phyto-sanitary conducts, Good Agricultural and Warehousing practices, packaging/labelling and excellent storage systems.
“All these are expected to forestall frequent contract cancellations and loss of business opportunities while allowing a significant increase in global acceptance of the items and for better quality of these products consumed locally.
“This project is designed to last for three years to enhance the integrity of the cowpea and Sesame value chain from Nigeria.
“Therefore, the focus lies on improved practices that will enable Nigerian stakeholders to comply with Maximum Residue Levels of selected pesticides used in Cowpeas and Sesame and Microbiological contamination with Salmonella (Sesame).
“Overall, it will improve the regulatory and control system as well as farming and processing practices applied for Cowpea and Sesame”, she concluded.

Agriculture

WOFAN Provides Health Care Services For Rural Women Farmers

Published

1 month ago

March 15, 2024

The Tide

The Women Farmers Advancement Network (WOFAN-ICON2), with support from MasterCard Foundation, and in partnership with Benson Colman and Associate Limited, has provided a “Lab-ulance” to support the healthcare system of a farming community in Gwarimpa Village, Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
This is part of its activities to mark this year’s International Women’s Day celebration.
The Lab-ulance is a tricycle fully kitted with medical equipment such as laboratory equipment, midwifery equipment, refrigerator powered by a solar system and other basic health equipment.
Executive Director of WOFAN, Hajia Salamatu Garba, while interacting with journalists at the unveiling of the programme, said the initiative was borne out of the concerns that farmers too need to be healthy before they can farm.
“It is the same thing that we are talking about and it is where holistic development is missing in Nigeria, because someone is farming doesn’t mean that after giving him fertiliser and seed, then you go and fold your arms, no.
“Farmers need to remain healthy before they can produce food for us sustainably. And if you look at the farming communities, they lack access to roads, healthcare facilities and so on. They can’t at first hand get services for their families.
“This was what brought the issue of Lab-ulance. These are youth that are working with WOFAN that decided to go innovative and come up with a very simple and affordable transport system that can also carry a doctor.
“In this Lab-ulance, we have the midwifery, we have the laboratory equipment, we have every equipment you need, including a refrigerator that is powered by solar system. This is the kind of development that we need in Nigeria”, Hajia Garba said.
She said it is ideal for every ward in Nigeria to have this system linked to primary healthcare and doctors would not be seen running away from duties because they have necessary facilities.
According to her, the women are required to pay only N2,500 as health insurance which will cover their husband and two children.