Alltimepost.com Investigation, By Bob MajiriOghene Etemiku
Even though the Obaseki administration has made the revival of agriculture one of its game plan for the employment of 200,000 young people in Edo State, investigations have revealed that with the near collapse of the state’s agricultural system, the idea will suffer serious setback.
Mrs. Efemena Odhogwu 41, is a businesswoman who lives in Benin City, Edo State capital. Most evenings after close of business, she would rush home to take care of her family. After all said and done, she would settle down to dinner – usually a big bowl of eba and egusi soup with two large pieces of meat.
She would wash the meals down with a full can of orange juice, believing that life is good. According to her, this has been her lifestyle for over 30 years, until the unexpected and dreaded news came.
Recently, Alltimepost.com Correspondent ran into her at the Faith Mediplex Hospital on Airport Road in Benin, where she disclosed that experience of insomnia and constant headaches made her to seek medical screening.
That test revealed that she had come down with type 2 diabetes – a medical condition where the sufferer has issues with blood sugar. Sufferers are usually within the 41-60 age range.
They usually inherit the condition from their parents or acquire it from eating starchy foods and from sitting down too much without regular exercise. What usually prevents type 2 Diabetes is avoiding sugar and sugar substitutes, as well as processed grains like popcorn and fries.
Doctors usually advise people with this medical condition to avoid chicken, eggs, fries, rice, bread and most of the swallow that Mrs. Odhogwu indulges in. In their place, they are advised to eat a lot of fruits and vegetables.
Armed with this advice from her doctor, Mrs. Odhogwu visited the vegetable market in Benin City.
The Vegetable market off Airport Road in Benin City displays a variety of fruits and fruit crops like tomatoes, carrots, onions, cucumbers, lettuce, spinach, broccoli, apples and ginger.
Even though Edo state has rich soil and good weather, many of these fruits are hard to find. Alltimepost.com investigations reveal that these foods and fruits sold at the Vegetable market are brought in, in large numbers from Borno, Plateau and Kaduna States.
Residents cannot buy them as easily as they wish: the sellers at that market prefer to sell at high prices to government officials and anyone who can afford the high costs of these seemingly exotic fruits and vegetables.
In time past, people like Mrs. Odhogwu, seeking to adjust their diet lifestyle would have no problem picking up any quantity of fruits from any market. Institutions like the then Bendel Agricultural Rural Development (BARDDA) took care of that.
Set up vide edict number 10 in 1985 as a 2nd generation multi-state agricultural development program, it had only two objectives: (1) facilitate incremental food productions of the small scale farmer and (2) promote infrastructural development of the rural areas, rural roads and potable water supply.
As at 1987, the Bendel ADP with five zones – Central, Bendel Central, Bendel East, Bendel North & South had only N29.1million to spend. That institution focused on the production of Yam, Maize, Rice, covering 215,000 hectares of land.
All its seven sub-units – from the technical, commercial, engineering, program management and finance, planning, monitoring and evaluation and manpower development departments – worked at full throttle to meet the objectives of the ADP in the then Bendel state.
After a name change vide an executive council conclusion took place in 1988, the BARDA became the Agricultural Development Programme Executive Committee (ADPEC) with the then commissioner for Agric as its chairperson.
With that change in name and reconstitution of the BARDA board, Edo state experienced a revolution in agriculture never before heard of.
According to documents at the Edo ADP, the institution distributed over 35,000 metric tons of fertilizer (640,000 bags of 50 kilograms), 31,000 bundles of cassava cuttings, over 33,000 pineapple suckers, over 150 metric tons of grain weeds, over 2500 citrus seedlings and over 16,000 liters of agro chemicals.
Part of this institution’s extension services included a research effort which carried out 531 Adaptive Farm Research, OFAR, trials which resulted in the ADP of that time coming up with Small Plot Adaptive Techniques (SPAT), which helped prospective farmers to own plots.
The SPAT eventually led to increases in the Yam in Yam, Maize in Yam, Maize in Cassava and Cassava in Cassava Cropping systems. At that time too, the Edo ADP produced disease resistant crops like cassava cuttings, rice, maize, cowpea, pineapple and plantain suckers, and citrus from its seed Multiplication farms.
But today at the Edo Agricultural Development Programme (ADP), the reverse seems to be the case. A visit by Alltimepost.com to the premises of ADP revealed that 90% of its entire infrastructure has nearly collapsed.
The library for instance, a place for rigorous agricultural research input, is covered with cobwebs and dust; the fertilizer hall has caved in and completely taken over by weeds.
Apart from one or two television outreaches aired by the Edo ADP, nearly all of its departments have gone under, and that perhaps excludes that of the Program Manager.
All the private individuals who reared pigs, birds and conducted aquaculture activities within the ADP premises under a lease deal were allegedly expelled about a year ago by the Edo State government.
Government officials, who begged for anonymity, told Alltimepost.com that they reached the decision because Oko community members were outraged over the offensive smell from these farms.
Yet what is left of their space is a massive bush inside the ADP premises, and a very well-constructed office for the Edo State Traffic Management Agency (EDSTMA).
Sources among the farmers told Alltimepost.com that there are plans by the government to sell off the place. The Edo ADP premises, like the Ogba Zoo, is on prime land on Airport Road in Benin.
Towards the end of the year 2018, Director of the Zoo, Mr. Andy Ehanire was kidnapped after his two police orderlies were shot to death. Prior to his ordeal, Mr. Ehanire said in an interview posted on the Ogba Zoo website that ‘a cabal was bent on sharing most of the zoo land without any official Government process with the diabolical ploy of using community youths and thugs as alibi.’
Arising from that is a word in town, supporting the idea that the Edo ADP, which is in a comatose state, is being prepared to be sold to the highest bidder. A semi-autonomous agency from the Edo Ministry of Agriculture & Natural Resources (MANR) it is supposed to be the technical arm of the ministry.
It handles extension services to adapt technologies from universities and research institutions to enhance the productivity of farmers. According to reliable sources, the Edo ADP seeks to make improved inputs available to farmers.
Since agriculture is one of the main drivers of the Obaseki administration, Alltimepost.com sought the views of the Permanent Secretary of the Edo Ministry of Agriculture & Natural Resources,
Mr. Kadiri Bashiru on the true position of the ADP, but his secretary would not allow us access.
The secretary told our reporter that Mr. Bashiru was not around and refused to make an appointment upon request.
The premises of the Agric ministry itself is like the graveyard. Rather than have the mien of an Agriculture ministry, it takes on the toga of an abandoned mechanic workshop or at best a scrap yard, with dilapidating buildings and old vehicles.
Mr. Peter Aikuomobhogbe is Program Manager of Edo ADP. He told Alltimepost that even though facilities at the ADP were built over 30 years ago, the government was doing its best to use agriculture in meeting its plan to employ 200,000 Edo people.
According to him, ADP conducts training seminars, training programs for farmers and certain Libya returnees interested in farming, citing several initiatives of the Obaseki administration like the Agripreneur program.
He said that with funds sourced from the CBN, the Edo government through the ADP is investing in crops of high economic value like maize, rice, soy, plantain and banana plantations. These plantations, he said were being sited strategically at Ekpoma, Ilushi, Agenebode, Iguomon, Iguoriakhi, Okhua and Uhuonde areas of Edo State.
Even though he was not sure of the number, he said that the Obaseki administration was already working with an already existing database of both experienced and aspiring farmers to create jobs.
“Investments in agriculture cannot be measured immediately. They take at least 5 years for the investments to begin to yield results. Our people should be expectant and should be patient,” Mr. Peter told Alltimepost.com.
No one knows if Benin City residents seeking agricultural produce to augment their lifestyles, like Mrs. Odhogwu will be patient until these investments will begin to yield.
One of the farmers seeking to invest in poultry, Mrs. Rachael Salami, said that in closing the farms run by private individuals, government closed to door to new farmers like herself and new innovations.
“After they drove away the pig and poultry farmers, they should have tried to replace them with genuine farmers like me who has had relevant training as a poultry farmer’, Mrs. Salami told Alltimepost.com, lamenting that government was yet to come up with the incentives that would revive agriculture in Edo State.
Mrs. Omorogieva, one of the pig farmers who was asked to leave the ADP premises alleged that the premises has already been penciled down for sale to the highest bidder.
“When we were there, we were the ones training students from UNIBEN and other higher institutions in Edo state how to raise pigs, poultry and aquaculture, not the ADP.
“After they made up their minds to chase us away, they concocted a story that the community wanted us to leave because of the stench from our farms.
“However, we had already taken care of that aspect of our work before they chased us away. I can tell you that the government took away our livelihoods, and four of our members have died from frustration,” she lamented.
In spite of the great plan by the Edo government to use agriculture to employ 200,000 Edo people, what is on ground at the Edo ADP and the Ministry of Agriculture & Natural Resources, both in Benin City, do not support such tall ambition.
Bob MajiriOghene is the founder of Bob MajiriOghene Communications, an investigative and environment journalism agency and publishers of Pathways for Development Communicators. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MPZS3V5 +2348156171133, +2349092194428 majirioghene@yahoo.com
