The previous night, a strategic thinking group, led by the Governor, Dr. Bukola Saraki, himself had brainstormed late into the night, combing through the entire fields of ideas and processes surrounding the project like landmine experts: Possibilities clashed with fears. Dangers wrestled with hopes. Benefits battled risks. Policies contested with politics. In the end, we came out with the only one consensus that really matters at this point: this is a project we have to push through in the interest of the people of Kwara State and Nigeria at large. Ours is not a resource rich state. But we are aware of our great potentials. And perhaps, the most important of these potentials is our geographical location.

As the gateway between the north and the south of the country, we are strategically positioned to provide access to the vast market potentials on both sides. In addition to this, Kwara state has a vast landmass that has been proven to be one of the most suitable for all kinds of crop production, especially soya beans, cashew nut and rice. We also have immense potentials for animals and livestock production. All of these are very valuable assets that could combine to provide the basis for the development of major agro-allied industries in the state.

As a government with a core responsibility to tackle the overwhelming problems of poverty caused largely by unemployment, it was clear to us from the onset that we have to device innovative strategies that would convert these huge potentials into real assets for our people. Challenged by declining resources and allocations at all levels of government, there is no doubt that this is the way to go if a State like ours must survive the crushing burden of widespread poverty.

 As we moved from the expansive sugar plantation of Bacita to the massive rice fields of Patigi, I could not help but marvel at how beautiful and richly endowed this country is. However, I could not help but shudder at what was yet another confirmation that Nigeria is performing lamentably below capacity. Someone once quipped that the land in Nigeria is so rich and fertile that if you pushed your fingers into the soil at night, they would have germinated at dawn. Yet this country spent an average of 1billion USD on importation of rice alone in a year and another 500million USD to import milk, especially from Ireland.

Only few years ago, Nigeria was planning to import beans from Burkina Faso. Maybe public outrage made the government to abandon the proposal. The point is that because we have had our yams so benevolently palm oiled by the gods for so long, and like spoilt children, we have lost zeal and the will to strive and struggle. The result of course is that our country, approaching half a century as a sovereign entity, has remained permanently potential. Perhaps, one of the boldest and construct economic reforms policy of the Obasanjo administration is the ban placed on importation of food and other items that can be produced locally. However, this salutory policy has not been met with commensurate efforts to subtitute these imports with local production that would not only meet the country’s need for food security but also launch our country onto the global market as major exporter of agricultural produce. Farming is still predonminantly at the peasant and subsistence level.

Inspite of the numerous agricultural institutes and centres across the country, it is obvious that we still lack the requisite technology and technical expertise for large-scale, export-oriented agriculture. Our best agricultural yields are hardly more than 1.5 tonne per hectare, whereas in Southern Africa, the average yield is about 10 tonnes for the same space of farmland. In fact, talking to the farmers from Zimbabwe, it is clear that we are not in the competition at all. A single of these farmers does more than 20, 000 tonnes in a single planting cycle, and because theirs is irrigation backed, he could do up to 60, 000 tonnes for a farming year. I could recall that even for a state-backed programme like the Kwara State’’s ‘‘Back-To-Farm’’ launched at the on-set of this administration, our best efforts only managed an average of 60 for the whole planting year. Before the crisis in Zimbabwe, agricultural export accounted for 50 per cent of the GDP of that country, making it the ““food basket”” of Africa with an average production of 1.8 million tonnes of maize annually. A single diary farmer in Zimbabwe was producing an average of 50 tonnes of milk per day while all we do in this country was to import highly subsidised milk that no one would consume in the producing countries anyway.

 Since the crisis in Zimbabwe started, 75 of the farmers have moved across the border to Zambia, where they have significantly affected the economy of that country. It is indeed a grand irony that for the first time ever, Zambia will be exporting food to Zimbabwe, a country that it used to depend on for its food. It is clear to the government in Kwara State therefore that something very innovative and revoultionary has to happen if we must deliver development and reduce poverty through the only real potential that we have, agriculture. And we are glad that the Federal Government has bought into this vision and is ready to drive it forward, not only in Kwara but also in other few selected states. Like President Obasanjo said when we visited, we would encourage the farmers to come, not because we would like to take away from Zimbabwe what it good for Zimbabwe, but because we would like to keep in Africa what is good for Africa. I am also aware of the sentimental arguments about African solidarity.

I think however, that this solidarity would be best expressed if we encourage the farmers to remain wherever else on the continent, rather than allow them to go and then use scarce resources to import food from the Neitherlands or Australia. If African sovereignty is what is at stake, I think true decolonisation would be best pursued if we create conditions that could make us self-reliant, especially on food security. Mozambique and Zambia were intimately connected to the struggle for the independence of Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe fought for his country’’s independence from Mozambique, while Joshua Nkomo was fighting from Zambia. Yet, these were the first two countries to welcome the farmers after the crisis in Zimbabwe, not because they wanted to sabotage history, but because they realised that poverty and hunger are harshly colour blind. One issue that has dominated almost all the discussions on the coming of Zimabwean farmers is the land question. With what is going on in Zimbabwe, this is hardly evitable. Land is a very emotional issue everywhere, but maybe especially so in Africa.

The entire narrative of colonisation and decolonisation of the African space is in many ways, essentially about land. So, no matter how lucrative this opportunity promises to be, this is one fundamental issue that cannot be overlooked. However, I must say that much of what I have heard as arguments regarding the issue of land and the coming of Zimbabwean farmers have been more emotionally effusive than rationally grounded. What we have seen is a verbatim substitution of two very distinctive situations in a way that gives very little regard to historical specificity, and the contentious questions of citizenship and identity in that Southern Africa country. Nobody is about to seize any lands here. Our politics and history is not condusive to such occupation.

The laws of process and outcomes do not support it. Quite significantly, it is clear that land, being an essential factor of production, is only valuable for what it does. The choice before us in this case is therefore very clear: we either continue to hoard the lands for their sentimental value or we push them forward for use by those who have the requisite expertise to make them work for us. At the moment we seem not to know what to do with the vast lands that abound across the country. Others do. When we found oil in the Niger Delta, we did not wait until we have the expertise to drill. We invited foreigners to do that for us. We neither sold the land nor the oil to them. Many years after, we have our own people who can do it as competently. Politics of access and distribution aside, the pact has led to a “win-win” situation between Nigeria and the foreign oil companies. The same goes for the initiative we are currently pushing with the Zimbawean farmers.

 We have the land, they don’’t. They have the expertise we don’’t. Together we can work out arrangements that would ensure that everyone profits in the end. Some newspapers have reported that President Olusegun Obasanjo has already offered the white farmers 99-year leasehold on land.

 Nothing could be more mischievously false. I was present at that session, and the President did not say anything of sort. The issue of land, like all other issues around the initiatives have not been decided, negotiations are still going on, but we believe that in the end we would arrive at agreements that would favour all stakeholders. More importantly for us however, is the fact that right from the very beginning, it is clear to the government in Kwara that the poverty reduction and empowerment content of this programme is as important as the concern for economic growth. This is why right from the very beginning the Government of Kwara State understands the need to bring in the local communities around the proposed farm locations. This way, commercial farming and communal farming can grow hand in hand, with the former lifting the latter. If the international community is really interested in reducing large scale poverty in Nigeria, here is the chance. Everyone or institution who has any idea or value to add to this project is welcome. Collectively, we have the chance now to make history. We must let this go.

Bolaji Abdullahi is Special Assistant to the Governor of Kwara State.