Agriculture: How Nigeria Lost Out With Malaysia and Indonesia, A Look At Gen. Ovadje’s Lecture 10 Years After-Editorial

-February 20, 2024, News/Editorial

In 2013, Brig. General.  Dr. Oviemo Ovadje, OFR, rtd, had delivered an interesting lecture at the 2^nd McNextAfrica Intellectual  Property, which he titled, ‘Nigeria in Agriculture, Defence technology, and Medicare, which is part of a book titled,  Nigeria in the global perspective, a divergent pragmatic compilation of thoughts on Nigeria, compiled by Mark Orgu, published in 2014.

First, Gen. Ovadje rtd narrated how the country’s health care system  collapsed because those who should reposition the health care delivery system fly abroad for medical treatment, which he called, medical tourist, even as he noted that event had shown that only few survive to return alive. He cited examples on how the Nigeria once lost a former Minister of Agriculture, Late Chief Afolabi, another senior military office, General Inienger who died of asthmatic. Ovadje even cited that, the late former President, Musa Yar’adua suffered brain damage from a severe asphyxia due to ignorance and poor management.

The former WHO gold award winner had posited in that lecture, that,  Nigeria should be having the best medical centres in the world because the country  have the financial capacity but corruption, greed, and selfishness will not let it be. On defence, he regretted the shameful position of Nigeria on defence technology, and how the country  set up  defence Industry Corporation in 1964, but corruption killed it, whereas Brazil defence industry corporate whom the country started with has gone far above Nigeria and can never be compared again. In our next edition, we shall bring you that write up, but for now, the editorial is focusing on agriculture because of the current hunger in the land.

Yes, the essence of this editorial is to remind us that, a country that continues to consume without producing will eat its flesh one day. That is the terrible position of Nigeria today. The country has continued to operate retrogressively multiple ministries that are unproductive. The major ministries, like Agriculture, mining, Oil and gas, technology among others have been crippled by corruption. It is now clear that Nigeria is at war with hunger and poverty, whereas there are vast land for agricultural productivity that would have given rise to green revolution.

Anyway, let us go ahead on the part of General Ovadje’s lecture and his thoughts on agriculture from the book mentioned earlier:

“Although, this is not my core area of competence, I am concerned, very concerned and very much concerned because this is a typical demonstration of our character. I want to take our position by comparing it with Malaysia and Indonesia. It is a common knowledge that Nigeria was a frontline producer of palm oil worldwide. Even when it was thought that the quality of our palm oil was low, efforts were made to improve on it as early as 1939 with the establishment of palm plantations and attainment of high quality breed. Malaysia got samples of this breed from Nigeria and some parts of West African Coast. Today, the story has changed. Nigeria has lost out in the game with Indonesia and Malaysia. It will interest you to know that Indonesia and Malaysia are now the first and second world producer of palm oil. Nigeria from its position, is now the 26^th world producer of palm oil as of today. We have taken many steps behind them and that is where we are. We have continued with our backward regression since not much have been done to remedy the situation. Nigeria now produce 1.2 million metric tons of palm oil which is mainly consumed locally.”

“The example and illustration of Malaysia is challenging and informing. The palm tree was introduced into Malaysia in 1917, as an ornamental potted plant. Since 1960 and after enhanced high quality breeds were gotten from the West African Coast, particularly Nigeria, Malaysia aggressively developed its palm plantation industry from 1.5million hectares in 1985 to 4.917 million hectares in 2011. Palm products are now the most important commodity crops in Malaysia.  The country produces over 18.9 million tons of palm oil in 2011 compared to the 4.1 million tons in 1985 and 6. 1million in 2012.  Palm kernel oil production rose from 1.3 million tons in 1999 to 4.7 million tons in 2011. Through well programmed research and development, Malaysia produced the Tenera variety which yields about 5 tons of crude palm oil per hectare per year. It took Malaysia deliberate plan between 1962 and 1982 to emerge as a world leader in palm oil production

Nigeria once thriving palm oil industry is often cited as one of the miserably failed economic opportunities in Africa.”

“Note that Nigeria accounted for 40 percent of global output in the 1950s. At the time of independence in 1960, palm oil controlled 82 percent our national export revenue which has dwindled to a miserable and meagre 7 percent global output.  We are further embarrassed that today we cannot satisfy our local  demands and the once biggest exporter of palm oil now imports for local needs.”

“Note that while world production is increasing Nigeria’s production is shrinking. Our agriculture has suffered from years of mismanagement, corruption, greed, nepotism, failed government policies, and absence of basic infrastructure.”

“Nigeria is no longer a major player in cocoa, groundnuts, rubber and palm oil production. We came down to 300,000 annual production of cocoa within a space of 25years. Our groundnut pyramid are no more. They have all vanished and disappeared. What a pity and shame. The questions still remain, what happened, who was responsible for the disappearance of these agricultural produce, whose negligence? These are therefore food for thought for all Nigeria.”

What do we need now is nothing but sacrificial lamb from the so called leadership of this country, there should be a total reduction of cost of governance, the presidency should jettison the idea of multiple appointments in ministries that are not producing anything rather, focus should be geared towards emancipation of the Nigerian people from this mental slaving of poverty.

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