Former NACCIMA National President, Oye Faults FG Over Food Imports Policy

• Predicts severe hunger for Nigerians

The immediate past National President of Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture, (NACCIMA) and Chairman, Alliance for Economic Research and Ethics, Otunba Kelvin Dele Oye, has predicted that Nigeria may witness the return of severe hungers in the next two years to come following current government’s food imports policy which aims to flood Nigerian markets with imported food products.

Oye, who made this assertion in his speech at the Centre for Financial Journalism, CFJ’s “The Bullion Lecture 2026” series in Lagos, lamented that the government’s food imports policy has resulted into uncertainty and crisis in the country’s agric sector, with series of lamentations from Nigerian farmers.

He said, “Recently, we were at the Vanguard Newspaper Economic Discourse which I was one of the Chairs and also delivered a keynote address and something came out there. We were talking about Nigeria’s agriculture. Can you believe that of all the stakeholders that were there, not one person has benefitted anything from the agric value chain, not a single one?

“I am not talking about small boys in the agric value chain. When you talk about the All Farmers Association of Nigeria, AFAN, they said they don’t have anything either in terms of support from the government. And the one that is even more criminal, the government told all of us that they wanted to finance the Bank of Agriculture, BoA, they raised the capital. They are supposed to put N1.5 trillion there, but one kobo has not yet been given to the Bank of Agriculture till date.

“How can you now tell people that the Bank of Agriculture should go to Commercial Bank and take a facility at 35 percent? And what has even killed the farmers most, is the government move to start importing food. So what has happened? And when they brought that policy, we wrote and said even if it’s in bulk, give the contract to those who have invested in the sector so that if they make any excess, they would re-invest it.

“But what did they do? They gave it to the same people standing around that are in the Villa and all they do is over imported foods and today, people are abandoning their crops.”

The erstwhile NACCIMA National President explained that, “Cassava is so cheap that if you hired people to go and remove yours, you can’t recover that money you used to remove it, not to talk of making profit. So, people are going bankrupt because of poor policies. And what this import policy creates is that in the next two years, we will be back to hunger again! Because people have stopped farming, people are going bankrupt and people are now choosing whether it pays to import than try to produce.

“So, government policy is so important because it is the foundation upon which you can make any investments. When the policy is wrong, you can never make any profit from it. Take a good example about what Dangote is doing about his refinery, if the government is not supporting it, help him get a free trade zone, get a reasonable dollar under the government, at least, he did something to that effect.

“Today, all African countries come to Nigeria to beg for fuel. They are complaining about the high price but, in some countries they don’t even have it at all. Nigeria is rescuing other countries. Just imagine if there is no Dangote refinery. You probably hold this lecture, you hold it on the zoom, if there is even light to access the zoom.

“What I am trying to say is that what has been responsible for our microeconomics and the ones the government is celebrating is the efforts of the private sector. People like BUA, Dangote and co who took the risk not at 35 percent interest rate because they have other resources and they could be able to access capital abroad”, Oye added.