You emerged as FEPSAN secretary about two years ago, how would you describe your experiences so far?
So far, it has been good, I have enjoyed the support of FEPSAN members, who I work for. I learned a lot under my predecessor, Alhaji Rabiu Kwa and all the experiences that I have are to his credit. I worked with him for years until he left, and the association decided that I continue in his place. Also, Mr. Thomas, the president of the association is someone I have known and benefited from his wealth of experience. I also have a very good relationship with core regulators, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Trade and Investment, as well as a lot of stakeholders in the public sector, the Presidency, the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority, and others too numerous to mention. The Farmers Associations, have collectively made the job very interesting. There are some challenges, but we thank God. I am hopeful that with other stakeholders we would be able to continually contribute our quota.
FEPSAN, obviously would have some teething challenges, what are they and how is FEPSAN coping with them?
There would always be different opinions amongst players in an association, but FEPSAN always promotes mutual respect for its members, because this is an association of very credible business people who have worked hard and tirelessly, to build their brand. We always ensure that the processes are as fair as possible. So, there would be different ways people see the industry and also think it should be run. However, we always follow the agreed decision. As a secretariat, we have no affiliation or particular interests, we always ensure that the interest of the association comes first
Everybody’s views are accommodated, and a position is taken based on voting, which is a normal democratic process. And our decisions are as objective as possible without sentiments, and then we reach out to the aggrieved parties and pacify them. I am very proud of FEPSAN members and the way they handle issues, especially when there is a disagreement. Once we have voted, we stick to our agreement. The amazing thing is that the interest of FEPSAN members is always the growth of the industry, to ensure that we leave an industry that we can be proud of behind. So, I will always give credit to our members.
Quality fertilizer is key to agricultural development, how has FEPSAN been able to ensure compliance to the acceptable quality fertilizer?
When these people who are involved
in fertilizer adulteration carry out their activities, they use the brands of our credible and hardworking members to promote adulteration. So, FEPSAN has also been proactive, especially by reviewing the old bill that was written by the Ministry of Agriculture. And with the support of the Ministry of Agriculture, we pushed and advocated for that bill to become law. Thank God for a responsive legislature that successfully passed the bill after a public hearing, and then President Buhari signed it into law. That bill regulates the quality of fertilizers in Nigeria, though it would need some time to be perfectly institutionalized because it is still a very new bill. I’m aware that the Ministry of Agriculture, led by the director Dr. Bello, is working tirelessly to see how the law would be implemented. So, there are ongoing efforts regarding the issue of the quality of our fertilizer. FEPSAN and the Ministry of Agriculture are playing their part to ensure that fertilizer adulteration is reduced to the barest minimum. The other part, which is the game-changer is with the farmers. That is why we are engaging the media, to enlighten our farmers on how to identify fake fertilizers. And what to do when they discover fake fertilizers around them. This is the goal. Once the farmers are empowered, 90 percent of our work is done because the farmers would reject the adulterated products, and report them. Now, we have a law that would prosecute anyone arrested for fertilizer adulteration. All these efforts were achieved by FEPSAN.
FEPSAN plays a vital role in Agriculture and food security, what are some of the economic impacts of FEPSAN’s activities?
Well, the impacts are numerous. First, we have successfully addressed the issue of fertilizer adulteration. I am emphasizing this because people don’t know that fertilizer adulteration is a cardinal sin in agriculture. Here is why. When you tell a farmer to get 1 ton or 0.5 tons from a hectare of maize, based on the result of your research, but now you can get up to 6 tons, you must do good agronomy practices: you must use good input, you must space your crops well, etc. And then the farmer in trust takes his hard- earned money and buys the input. He doesn’t know it is adulterated fertilizer because these are chemicals, so he can’t test them. He could only try them on the field and then see the results. I have cheated that farmer, because if I told him to buy 20:10:10. It should be 20 in Nitrogen, 10 in Phosphorus, 10 in Potassium.
Now when the farmer buys it and tests it in the lab and he gets 10 in what should have 20, 5 in what should have 10, and 3 in what should have 10 that means he has been cheated. The
8 bags I told him to buy is three bags. That would affect his farm yield. And he may not be able to attribute the poor yield to bad fertilizers that he bought. That is why fertilizer adulteration in agriculture is a cardinal sin. Because many factors go into production and farmers could blame it on those other factors. Or attribute it to the will of God. This is why quality is important for us. When we give quality fertilizers to farmers, they get bumper harvests, assuming other variables and rain are there. That way, they are contributing their quota to the economy as well.
Two, because we are focused on production in Nigeria, we are saving the country a lot of foreign exchange. We are saving about $200 million in foreign exchange every year. That’s a lot and as the demand grows, you can imagine how much we would be saving in foreign exchange as a country.
We as an association, have continued to advocate that government make the output market conducive for farmers. That way, farmers would not be looking for input from individuals. If the price of what a farmer is going to sell is good, he goes ahead to buy his inputs. When you watch programs like the Central Bank’s ‘Anchor Borrower’, where the government gives farmers loans and grants their off-take, so their product does not waste and are sold at the end of the season. These big boosts, are part of FEPSAN policy position and advocacy, to make the output market work for the farmers.
FEPSAN partly empowers farmers with knowledge on development in fertilizers production and its usage. Do you get any support from the government to discharge this duty?
The government has been fantastic. We are a regulated association and the government has encouraged us greatly and the government does not interfere in our association, which is very important. The government has also accepted some of the proposals we put forward on how to move the industry forward. One of them is the presidential fertilizer initiative, which was honored. And we can see the increase in fertilizer production, in Nigeria today. Whether it is the Dangote’s, Indorama’s, or the blending plants, we are seeing that support for our industry. We played a very strong role to advocate for the fertilizer bill to become law. It couldn’t have been done without the government. So, the government has been fantastically magnanimous to the agricultural industry.
The exchange rate is hurting businesses across Nigeria, is the government supporting FEPSAN in any way to cushion the effects of the high exchange rate?
For us as an industry, yes. Thankfully, these are some of the silent achievements the government has made in the sector, which has reflected in the cost of the fertilizer product in the market. For example, the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority, of course, working with the Central Bank, helps to import raw material on behalf of blenders. If this importation is left solely to market forces to decide on their own, the bigger players would push the smaller players out of the market. But the government has taken care of that so that the fertilizer producers could focus on their production in Nigeria and not worry about the exchange rate and other things. So, they import the best global product (which are not sub-standard products), for fertilizer producers in Nigeria. We have a strategic partnership with the biggest phosphate producer in the world, OCP in Morocco. We import Potash from Russia. And, of course, Nigeria is open to the importation of good raw materials at any time.
What are the biggest gains for PFI?
The biggest gain for us is that farmers have access to quality fertilizer. In the PFI, we are getting it directly from the plant, but today, Nigeria has built its fertilizer plant, which has an enormous production capacity. The good thing about the program is that anybody who has been in the agriculture industry could tell you what the industry used to be, and what it is now. Even a blind man could see that these stories were not fabricated, because government funds were not used to build the latest fertilizer plant in Nigeria, which was strictly private sector funds. A private sector businessman is not going to put in $5 million, because he likes President Buhari’s face, or because President Buhari knows how to talk, do you understand? He is doing that because the environment has viable potentials for such investment. So, the environment is conducive to invest and that is a big gain for us. Today, we have about 45 blending plants for the PFI, we still have more applications from businessmen, who want to be part of this program. That means that more people are building fertilizer plants, and we encourage them to go to areas in the country, where they are no blending plants. Today we have blending plants in Akwa Ibom, Rivers State, Ajaokuta, Bauchi, etc. Apart from the plants in the Northwest, they are spreading and this is not government money, this is private sector money. They are changing the narrative and putting their hard-earned money there because of its consistency.
COVID-19 pandemic disrupted global activities across sectors, how is FEPSAN coping with the disruption caused by COVID-19?
Thank God we were proactive as an industry, and as a country, we were also proactive regarding our fertilizers. It would have been worse. Again, let me tell you, two components in blending are imported into the country. And a lot of these countries where we imported those materials, were hit by COVID-19. We had reductions in production and this challenged the production. It was a big challenge. One of our big production plants that produce raw material in Nigeria lost a number of their staff to the pandemic and so the plant was temporarily shut down. It had a reverberating effect on the industry.
A lot of proactive measures were taken concerning fertilizer production. What were these measures? One, we had this supply agreement with key producers across the world, and we give them kudos for honoring the agreements. OCP Morocco has been fantastic because even in the COVID-19 lockdown, ships of the DAP were still coming. When a situation requires a company to cut down or manage production, they would have to prioritize whom to give their cargo to. But we have had it good and have gotten amazing discounts. The price of fertilizer ought to be higher than its production cost, but we enjoy these fair market prices because of these discounts we got, thanks to the current administration. President Buhari personally negotiated the discount himself. But we had some internal challenges especially, on how the products moved during the COVID-19 pandemic. You know there was a lot of confusion when the pandemic started. Sometimes ships had to stay for two weeks before they berthed, because of the 14 days quarantine. Also, most of the products were coming from a particular state in the country, and the governor attempted to protect his state, by putting in COVID-19 measures, which made it a bit difficult to move the products. But after some engagements, the governor allowed products to move from his state. Even at that, the products still were restricted and delayed by the various roadblocks. The Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 gave fiat for fertilizer trucks to be given priority, but there were always long queues. If you remember, during the early periods when those checkpoints were mounted, some states would ask the drivers to come down and check their temperature before they could pass. One of the states which was a gateway to Kaduna was locked down. FEPSAN worked closely with states and the federal government, to ensure that those measures were implemented. But then it had a bit of an impact on the industry.
Because of these challenges, some people anticipated that production would be scarce, and they started hoarding. That caused scarcity too, which was also a challenge. But we were able to overcome them. By and large, we had good access to fertilizer and at a reduced price through President Buhari, which was very helpful.
The price of maize is on the increase, and it is affecting poultry farmers. In your view, what do you think could be done to salvage the situation?
Massive production. Go more into production. These are some of the challenges we had to face. In a situation where a farmer would not go to their farms to harvest, what do you think would happen? People even said the government should remove the ban and import. Globally, prices of commodities had increased within the last 1-2 years, even maize. How can you import at such high costs? The COVID-19 pandemic caused countries to prioritize their population first. With the uncertainty caused by COVID-19, some countries had stored enough food for the next three years. They were not concerned about sales or pushing products out there. They wanted enough for their population. So, it is just a global problem that should further help Nigerians think. Nobody is going to come to solve our problems for us, because everybody has theirs. So, more and more products are how we could solve the problem.
I think we did about 11.2millipn tons of maize in 2020. Our requirement is around a 25million turns per annum. But we did just 11million. So more aggressive production would solve the problem. Maize farming has been on for years. The price is high. The more people go into it, products would be surplus and prices would come down. Also, the more people go into farming, the fewer people would go into crime. It is about time farmers started marking money. We have created them too much in the country.
