SENATE OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA. Visit by the Director of International Press Institute (IPI), Vienna, Austria

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1 SENATE OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA Wednesday, 13 h July, 2011 The Senate met at a.m. (The President in the Chair) PRAYERS VOTES AND PROCEEDINGS The President: Distinguished Colleagues, we have the Votes and Proceedings of Wednesday, 13 th July, 2011 before us for approval: Pages 45, 46, 47 and 48. Senator Clever Marcus Ikisikpo (Bayelsa East): Mr. President, I move that the Votes and Proceedings of Tuesday, 12 th July, 2011 be approved. Senator Emmanuel Bwacha (Taraba South): Mr. President, I second the Motion as moved by Senator Ikisikpo that the Votes and Proceedings of Tuesday, 12th July, 2011 be approved. Question put and agreed to. Resolved: That the Votes and Proceedings of Tuesday, 12 th July, 2011 be approved. ANNOUNCEMENTS Visit by the Students of Social Studies Department, College of Education Gindiri, Plateau State The President: I wish to acknowledge the presence of Students of Social Studies Department, College of Education, Gindiri in Plateau State, who are in the Gallery to observe our Proceedings. We wish them fruitful observation of our proceedings. Birthday Wishes The President: May I on behalf of all of us, wish Distinguished Senator Maina Maáji Lawan a Happy Birthday. Yesterday was his birthday but for one reason or the other, he was held up in Maiduguri but he is here with us today. We wish you a happy birthday and many more returns and prosperity in future. Obviously, you do not qualify for a paid advert from us. 1 Visit by the Director of International Press Institute (IPI), Vienna, Austria The President: The Director of the International Press Institute (IPI), Vienna, Austria Mrs. Allison Mackenzie, would be visiting me today Wednesday, 13 th of July, 2011 by 2.00 p.m. at the Conference Room, the new wing. Distinguished Senators who have media background are requested to attend. Senator Ganiyu O. Solomon (Lagos West): Mr. President, I have a Point of Order. The President: Point of Order, Senator Ganiyu O. Solomon. Senator Ganiyu O. Solomon: with your permission, I read. The President: Please, read. Order 42 and Senator Ganiyu O. Solomon: Order 42(1): The matter for discussion shall, if possible, be referred to the President of the Senate before commencement of the day s sitting and the President of the Senate shall refuse to allow the claim unless he is satisfied that the matter is definite and urgent. (2) If the claim is allowed by the President of the Senate and the leave of the Senate is given by at least one-fifth of the Senators, the matter shall stand over till the next legislative day. Can I give the synopsis of the issue? The President: issue. Yes, give the synopsis of the Torrential rainfall within Lagos Metropolis Senator Ganiyu O. Solomon: On Sunday, the 10 th of July, 2011, there was a torrential rainfall within Lagos and its metropolis. At the end of the day, it left in its way sorrow, tears and losses of high magnitude. Lives were lost, properties were destroyed and quite a large number of citizens were dislocated from their houses. It was actually the rain but the severity was so much that up till now, the State Government is grappling with the efforts to arrest the situation. Given the fact that we are just in July and we expect

2 0503 more rains to come. We believe that a lot of things have to be put in place to avoid future occurrences. We also believe very strongly that the Agencies of Federal Government and the Federal Government too, must come to the aid of the State Government, so that hand in hand we can find a solution to the problems at hand. That is the brief synopsis. The President: Senator Ganiyu Solomon discussed it with me and I have no objection, but as required by rule, I need to get one-fifth of the Senate to support it. So, is it the wish of the Senate that we take the issue? Several Distinguished Senators: Yes. Question put and agreed to Resolved: That the matter be taken on the next legislative date. PRESENTATION OF BILLS Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba (Cross River Central): Mr. President, the first Business of the Day is the Presentation of three Bills standing in the names of Senators Domingo Obende, Ganiyu O. Solomon and Solomon Ita Enang respectively. You may wish to invite the Clerk of the Senate to read the Short titles of the Bills for the First Time. Same Gender Marriage (Prohibition) Bill, 2011 Same Gender Marriage (Prohibition) Bill, 2011, sponsored by Senator Domingo Obende (Edo North) Read the First Time. Chartered Institute of Security and Investment (Establishment) Bill 2011 Chattered Institute of Securities and Investment (Establishment, etc) Bill, 2011, sponsored by Senator Ganiyu O. Solomon (Lagos West) - read the First Time. Economic and Financial Crimes Commission Act 2004 (Amendment) Bill, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission Act 2004 (Amendment) Bill, 2011 sponsored by Senator Ita Enang (Akwa Ibom North East) - read the First Time. ORDERS OF THE DAY CONFIRMATION OF NOMINATIONS Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba: the first Order of the Day is a Motion requesting this Distinguished Senate to resume the Screening of the persons listed on the Order Paper as Nominees for the position of Ministers of the Government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. You will recall that this Senate concluded the screening of six nominees for Ministerial appointments yesterday, 12 th July The Senate will now resume the screening of the nominees listed on our Order Paper. In order to facilitate this exercise, I move that this Senate now resolve into a Committee of the Whole. Senator George Akume (Benue North-West) Mr. President, I rise to second the Motion that the Senate do resolve into the Committee of the Whole to conduct the confirmation exercise. Question put and agreed to. Confirmation of Ministerial Nominees as Ministers of the Government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, in accordance with Section 147(2) of the 1999 Constitution CONSIDERED IN THE COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE (The Chairman in the Chair) Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba: Mr. Chairman, distinguished Colleagues, having resolved into the Committee of the Whole, permit me to move pursuant to our Rule 17 that the Senate do admit the Special Adviser to Mr. President on National Assembly Matters and the Nominees into this hallowed Chamber. Senator George Akume: Mr. Chairman, I rise to second this Motion as ably moved by the Leader of the Senate. Question put and agreed to. 2

3 0505 Resolved: That pursuant to our Rule 17 the Senate do admit the Special Adviser to Mr. President on National Assembly Matters and the Nominees into this hallowed Chamber. Dr. Akinwunmi Ayo Adesina appears before the Senate The Chairman: Distinguished Colleagues, we have got with us Dr. Akinwunmi Ayo Adesina from Ogun State. Dr. Adesina, we have a copy of your CV but if you want to emphasise anything there, just let us know. If there is anything that is left out, then you will let us know; but briefly, tell us something about yourself and why you are nominated. Dr. Akinwunmi Ayo Adesina: Your Excellency, the Senate President, distinguished Senators of our nation, the founders of our democracy and custodians of our laws, I salute you. I thank His Excellency, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces for the great honour of being put forward as a Ministerial Nominee. I am humbled to be before you today. Let me tell you a bit about myself. I am proud of my heritage. I am proud that God made me a Nigerian. I am proud that I will live as a Nigerian; I will die a Nigerian and when it is time to be resurrected, I will resurrect as a Nigerian. I come from a very humble background. I was born 51 years ago in Ibadan. My father Rowland, grew up as a farmer in Ijebu Igbo, Ogun State. He could not go to school because agriculture was not working for him. So at the age of 14 years my father could still not read and still could not write until an uncle of his came from Lagos and he was generous enough to take my father with him to Lagos. When he got to Lagos, he was fortunate to have been put in Igbobi College Lagos. My father eventually became a public servant and he retired as a Government Auditor for the Government of Nigeria. When it was time for my father to send me to school, he sent me to a village school. I asked my father why he was sending me to a village school. He said, my son, you should go and learn the challenges that face village people. I went to Ejigbo 0506 Baptist High School. My classmates were all sons and daughters of farmers. I worked in their fields; I saw the challenges that they were faced with and why many of them dropped out of school. Many of them could not perform because, quite frankly, many of them could not afford food to eat and come to school. So I saw poverty in first hand, Your Excellency, and that changed me for the rest of my life. I was convinced very early that agriculture is not just about food; it is about raising incomes and creating wealth for farmers so that their kids can also go to school and have good life. I decided to read agriculture I suppose, by destiny. I attended the University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University. I graduated in 1981 with Bachelors of Agriculture with First Class Honour in Agriculture/Economics. I was the first student to get that distinction in the history of the university. I worked for my National Youth Service Corp with Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria and at the Open University of Nigeria at that time of its formative stage. I later worked with Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Ife. My country awarded me the Federal Government PhD Scholarship for my PhD training in the United States. I attended Purdue University which is the leading University of Agriculture in the United States where I got my Masters and my PhD in Agriculture Economics. In 1988, I finished my PhD and won the outstanding PhD Thesis award by the University for my Work. I have 23 years of international experience in agriculture working from poor farmer experience, with private sectors, the government, the civil societies, the development and financial institutions, and with the African Presidents. I have worked in several African countries and in my own country Nigeria. I am comfortable with Presidents arguing the case for farmers. I represent and defend the interest of farmers. Until my nomination Your Excellency, I have been working as the Vice President for the Alliance for Green Regulation in Africa which is an international organisation set up by Rockefeller Foundation with the sole purpose of supporting African governments and countries to transform their agricultural sector and lift millions out of poverty. It is chaired Mr. Kofi A. Annan, the former United 3

4 0507 Nations Secretary General. I worked for a decade in three international agricultural research centres. I was Principal Economist and Social Science Coordinator for the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) from 1995 to I was a Principal Economist and Social Science Coordinator for the West African Rice Development Association, now the African Rice Research Centre for five years. I also worked as Assistant Principal Economist for International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT); it is one of the global Agricultural Research Centres. Thereafter, I joined Rockefeller Foundation in New York, where I was an Associate Director for Food Security in charge of African investment for the Foundation. It is my training, exposure, experience and passion that prepared me well for my life, vision, work and mission, which is to end hunger and poverty in Africa. I have worked in several African countries including my own nation Nigeria, on transformative programmes for food security. In 2011, I worked with the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, to design the Nigeria Incentive Base for Agricultural Lending which led to the lending of N450 billion into agriculture valued to Nigeria. It was launched by his Excellency, the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, last week. During President Olusegun Obasanjo s regime, I had the singular honour of working with him at one of the West Africa Fertilizer Summit, which he chaired. It was to transform agriculture in Africa by addressing the crisis in Africa. I have helped several countries to transform their own agricultural sectors; and I believe by God s grace if I succeed before you, I will do exactly the same for my father s land. In 2010, I was fortunate to have been appointed by United Nations Secretary-General to be among the seventeen world leaders that will spearhead Millennium Development Goals. I have also been fortunate to have been recognised for the little work that I have been able to do, not just myself but I work with so many people. I was awarded the Yara Price in Oslo in 2007 for my work in developing rural networks that are now reaching hundreds of millions of farmers across Africa. I was given a cash prize of $100,000 for that work. I took the prize and turned it into another prize, which is to reward African businesses that are supporting farmers in rural areas across Africa; and I endowed my own University who produced me, the University of Ife; for twenty five years endowment to support students, faculty members, to be transformative in developing technologies that work for millions of farmers. I was awarded CAST Borlaug Prize Laureate, last year by the Council for Science and Technology of United States. I was given the outstanding black agricultural economics by the American Agricultural Economics Association. I was fortunate to be given a distinguished Alumnus award by Obafemi Awolowo University, my own University in Ife. On 14th May, 2011, I was fortunate to have been awarded an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters by Franklin and Marshall University, which is one of the America s foremost Liberal Art Colleges for my work. It is this passion, my wealth of experience, my determination to end hunger and poverty that brought me home to answer the call of his Excellency, the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, to serve my father land. I am here to give back to my father land; this is not a job but a mission. If I am confirmed, I will serve Nigeria with all of my strength, dedication, integrity and honour, the very best of the God given ability that I have. If I am confirmed, I will not be a singular person, I will work with a team, I am a team player to work with all the Ministers. I will work passionately for the success of the President s agenda and reform for transforming Nigeria and also, to this distinguished Senate. It will be a great honour for me to serve my country. I now humble myself before God, I humble myself before the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. I humble myself before you Sir, the Senate President; I humble myself before you distinguished Senators and the custodians of our laws. May God guide you and may God help me. Senator Ike Ekweremadu (Enugu West): Dr. Adesina, I must admit your passion for this country and your strong pedigree. I am sure I had course to meet with you outside this country. I have very few questions for you. Firstly, it appears to me that you were merely on the policy side; outside when you were in the village, have you ever had a farm of your own? We would like to look at the practical side. Secondly, you said your mission is to end hunger and poverty through agriculture. We would like to hear from you in strong practical terms how you tend to deal with this. Thirdly, we have had people who are highly accomplished in academics in agriculture holding portfolio as Ministers of Agriculture in Nigeria, at the

5 0509 end of the day we end up on the same note of poverty and sustained hunger. What are you going to do differently this time that will change the course of agriculture and farming in Nigeria forever? Senator Abdullahi Adamu (Nasarawa West): Mr. Nominee, I have only one question which has been partially addressed by the Deputy Senate President s questions, but I still want to underline it to say that Nigeria today, 51 years after Independence is still a net importer of food despite all the blessings God has given us. We have had all manner of retreats, seminars and white papers, yet we have not been able to deliver food to the teeming population of Nigeria. We are about 150 million people today; and that figure is questionable as far as I am concerned. When you talk of food security, here we are with this population seeking to be fed, the little we produce quite substantial part of it is lost to our neighbours, yet we remained a net importer of food. What is it you believe you can do as the team player that you said you are, to change the fortunes of agricultural production to meet our basic needs and also meet the challenges that face us as the biggest black country in the world? Senator Robert Boroffice (Ondo North): Mr. Nominee, there is no doubt that you have an impressive Resume and you have very rich interaction with the international agricultural community. I also want to underscore what my distinguished Colleagues have said earlier. We were told several years ago that palm fruit was taken from Nigeria to Malaysia; today we still produce only palm oil, palm kernel from the oil palm. Whereas in Malaysia they produced about 250 products from oil palm including bio fuel and anti biotic. Less than 5 per cent of the population in America is responsible for feeding the Americans. This is because they have applied technology. We have a very important resource in Nigeria which is the satellite technology, which the Ministry of Agriculture and the agricultural community are not making use of. The European Council or Community actually signed an agreement with the National Space Research and Development Agency to use our Satellite for monitoring agricultural products in the European Union, so also Brazil, in monitoring Amazon. What will you do if you are appointed the Minister of Agriculture in Nigeria to ensure that this very important resource is used to enhance our productivity in the agricultural sector? Senator Nkechi Nwaogu (Abia Central): Mr. Nominee, I am quite impressed with your CV. I am not here to eulogise you but the truth must be told. I am quite impressed with the dossier as we have seen. You have been consulted as testified in your documents by a number of agencies on ways of improving not only global agricultural investment specifically in African and even zeroed down to Nigeria. If you are confirmed by this Chamber and you are given the opportunity as a Minister, can you tell this Senate how we can do a possible and realisable turnaround in investment in Agriculture for it to regain its lost glory in the economic strata of our dear nation? Secondly, tell us how this country can harness the seasonal agricultural produce that we have had which has led to a lot of wastes and then chronic scarcity at times of want. How can we improve on the technology of preservation and storage of our agricultural produce in this country? Lastly, why is it that despite the large valuable land that we have in Nigeria, yet this available land for agriculture has remained unattractive to investors both internal and external? How can we utilise this land and compete with nations like Israel and other nations that have gone back to agriculture and are making reasonable contribution on their nation s GDP through agriculture? How can our agriculture measure reasonably on our GDP? The Chairman: You may now respond to those sets of questions. Dr. Akinwunmi Ayo Adesina: Thank you very much your Excellency, the Senate President. Let me start with the first question from the Deputy Senate Leader on whether I have a farm of my own. At this point, I do not have a farm of my own but I am going to have a farm of my own. I have worked with so many farmers; I know exactly what the issues are. At the right time, I would have my own farm. I have worked on farms and lived on farms, so I know that the issues are passionately bad. In terms of practical issues about how to end poverty, let us start perhaps with the poverty situation in Nigeria. Right now, we have 70 per cent of our population living on less than a dollar a day. If we move that to two dollars a day, that means we would have 92 per cent of our population that are actually living on less than two dollars a day.

6 0511 As a nation blessed by God as we are, we have oceans of poverty in the middle of that plenty that we have. When we look at that, it really means that most of those that are actually poor are in rural areas and because most of them depend on agriculture that has not been performing well for decades; it means that the productivity of agriculture is very low. The yields of Nigerian agriculture in terms of seeds are below one ton per hectare. The global aggregate is about 5.6 tons per hectare. In terms of use of fertilisers by Nigerian farmers, it is less than 10 kilograms per hectare but global aggregate is about 145 kilograms per hectare. When we look at it in terms of tractorisation intensity in Nigeria, we are below potential. We are about 10 tractors for every 1000 hectares we have. If we look at it in terms of investment in agricultural sector to raise productivity, we are investing today only 3 per cent of the total budget of the Federal Government of Nigeria in agriculture, in a sector where we have 70 per cent of our population. As a result of all of these, and in addition to other factors in terms of weak research institutions, Research and Development capacity in this country is actually very weak. We are spending 0.8 per cent of the total budget in agriculture on Research and Development. We have a lot of research institutions but the productivity and the efficiency and the output of that for farmers are very low. The problems are quite complex, and they do not lend themselves to easy solutions. We have to work on raising agricultural productivity first, because if we raise agricultural productivity by about only 10 per cent, we would be making about 70 million people out of poverty, but we have to invest in the right things. We have to invest in seed. In terms of seed, this country uses only 8000 metric tons of seed. The potential demand for seed in this country is one million tons. We have a lot of seeds companies in this country. It is all around processing capacity, access to seeds modification and also access to financing for any of them. In terms of what I would do differently, let me say that your question is exactly the right question. We have to do something differently because the current trajectory is a disastrous trajectory. Agriculture is not a development programme. It is not a social sector, it is a business. It must be structured, supported, and enabled and must work for the millions of farmers that we have. They must earn a living from agriculture One of the distinguished Senators mentioned the case of United States. I was with the Secretary of Agriculture in the United States just about a month ago and he was just coming from a Senate Hearing just like this one, and he said to me, we have in this country 200,000 farmers and these 200,000 farmers feed a population of 300 million people. They are the largest producer in the world, very productive, efficient and competitive. They are number one donor aid in the world in terms of food aid; and they are also the largest commercial exporter of food. I told him that in my country we have 14.5 million farmers. Majority of them still cannot feed themselves. What we are saying is that, that trajectory has to change. I am going to combine some of the questions and say something about the issue of food import which the distinguished Senator rightly mentioned. Between 2007 and 2010, our nation spent N98 trillion importing food. If you look at the structure of that situation it makes your heart bleed. For example, take a look at rice; we spent N356 billion importing rice last year. That means that by the time this distinguished Senate is on recess today, that would be N1billion per day that we have just spent importing rice. If you look at wheat for example, we spent N635 billion last year on wheat importation. It gets also to other things. If you look at what has happened with sugar, we spent N217 billion importing sugar and at the same time N97 billion importing fish. So there is this gap between food import and the export of our agriculture. That gulf is the problem. It is not fiscally sustainable and it also turned us to a dependent nation on the global market because as the commercial prices rise in the global market, the prices in our markets automatically shoot up. We are making rich nations richer and we are making our own farmers poorer. It is this trajectory that we talked about that we need to change. Nigeria used to be the largest producer in terms of palm oil. Our production of palm oil accounted for 60 per cent of global production. When we look in terms of cotton, we produce that in great quantity. When I was a kid growing up in this country we have groundnuts pyramids in the North; and we were accounting for 40 per cent of global groundnut production, 25 per cent of groundnut oil production, and 15 per cent of cocoa production globally. But 6

7 0513 today, those have been reversed. We have lost the glory of Nigerian Agriculture and that is what we have to get back. To get that requires more than rhetoric. It requires that we take agriculture as a business. It requires that we go for a particular value change in which we know the trends of the market, work our way back from that market, structure our value system, our infrastructure system, our finance system, and the way we organize farmers, and our logistics system to be able to play in this market. On Agriculture, food is the largest business in the world but we are not structured to play that. So, this is the trajectory that I think absolutely has to change. In terms of the question in respect to satellite energy, let me say something in respect to climate change. We live in an environment; we have just witnessed what happened in Lagos with the tremendous amount of flood. That is not going to be something that is happening continuously. It will become more frequent because climate change means that you are having rise in sea level temperatures. It also means that you are going to have more floods, more droughts and more heat. We must prepare ourselves and our farmers; not only to produce today but to produce in a future under changing climate change. That means that we must be able to have weather stations in this country to be able to predict the variability of rainfall. In a dimension, we have only 51 weather stations in this country. That is not more than the amount of weather stations on a universal family in United States. We must invest in physical infrastructure to upgrade that weather station capacity. Secondly, we must provide climate information to the farmers. We have 85 million people in this country using cell phones. We must be able to provide information in a user friendly manner via cell phones to farmers to be able to know when the changes are coming so that they can plant what variety they want to plant, what fertilizer to use, and what crop they want to grow. All of these are very important. I want to say that we must strengthen the universal system to help us come up with global predictive models to be able to address a lot of these challenges perhaps working with the meteorological organisation. When it comes to issue of wastage, let me give example of Kadawa Valley in Kano. We are presently producing 240,000 tonnes of tomatoes, per cent of that get rotten because there is no processing capacity and cold storage capacity. Therefore, the farmers grow this but once the productivity rises the price collapses on them. All of a sudden Nigeria has to claim the largest importer of tomato paste from China and Italy. We have to fix that at a value chain. We have to get the processors, the package, the cold storage systems and the right varieties. In order to make paste, you need a particular variety which is called china red. It is a different kind of variety than what we have right now. We must work with Institutions like International Institute of Tropical Agriculture and the World Vegetable Centre to come up with the right varieties for our farmers to process that into paste. We have that problem with cassava if you go to the South-South. It is the same with the South-West and North Central. We have problem with cassava production glut. There was a phenomenon programme that President Obasanjo s government put forward. It was a Presidential initiative; and they were good programmes on cassava, rice and vegetable oil. But on cassava, if you look at the problem today, we have fresh roots of cassava that are produced. The farmers cannot get into the market because the road infrastructure is not there and there is no processing capacity close to them. Obviously, we are going to lose most of that cassava. The other problem is that you can process cassava into a lot of things. Cassava for example, can be used for cassava starch, cassava as glucose, cassava for livestock feed, chips. Cassava can be used as ethanol, as one of the Senators mentioned. These are the things that are happening. In other words, we are sitting on wealth that we are not unlocking. Potential is important, Nigeria has great potential. Presently, we have 97 million hectares of agricultural land and 77 per cent of that is in arable crops. We have a situation today where we are the largest producer of cassava in the world which accounts for 45 million tonnes, but we account for zero per cent in terms of value added. Thailand produces only 10 per cent and they can account for 80 per cent of global value. We must upgrade our value change; we must take agriculture as a business and direct other investments in that way. Lastly, on land resources, potential is important but it is not enough. Nobody eats potential. Our agricultural potential in the Northern savannah is immense; yet we have a lot of poverty in these areas. We must raise agricultural productivity, we must

8 0515 have rural infrastructure for farmers to get their things to the market. We must have an extension system that works for them and we must also earn the institutional and policy abandonment of farmers. Nigerian farmers are crying as one of the most abandoned in the world. They pray in the morning to plant their seed, pray in the afternoon because they do not know what is going to happen, and they also pray when they get to the market. I like prayers and pray all the time but the way to structure agriculture is that farmers must see agriculture as something that works, for them. Therefore, we must unlock the potential of our agriculture. Simply saying that we have potential is just not good enough. Senator Ganiyu Olarewaju Solomon (Lagos West): Mr. Nominee, I am taking a cue from the Deputy Senate President s question because it is closely related. You have developed strategies, policies and conducted quite a number of researches all on agriculture, but the work of a Minister goes beyond all these. It is really to execute all these policies, strategies and particularly legislation. You have not indicated any knowledge in that area; maybe you want to brief us further. I am also worried on another aspect. I believe very strongly on learning on the job. Wherever you are you can learn on the job, but when it comes to a position that has a definite term, a short term for that matter, I do not believe in learning on the job. I believe you bring on board your past experience. If you rely on learning on the job, it is like giving an articulated vehicle for a learner to drive and the result can be disastrous. What do you think about this? Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba (Cross River Central): Dr. Akinwunmi, you sound logical and persuasive. I am sure many distinguished Senators will agree with that impression. I grew up in a farming environment and I left that environment over forty years ago. But each time I go back home the same farmers I saw and knew as a child are the same people who are farmers today and many of them are now old men and women. Their children did not grow up on the farms; they went and acquired Western education and moved on. The generation after their children are now hooked on quick fixes. They are looking for quick money; they are all in the cities trying their hands in politics, in bunkering, in crime and other areas that will bring them quick money. You have this beautiful vision for agriculture in Nigeria. My simple question is, where will you find the young men and women to drive that vision? Senator Simeon Sule Ajibola (Kwara South): Dr. Adesina, taking a detailed study of your Curriculum Vitae, there is no doubt that you are quite versatile in area of grain production, tuber, cropping, cocoa, fertilizer and related issues both in policy and possibly implementation. But we have other areas of agriculture such as animal production, fishery and rural development. Please can you share with us your knowledge of these areas and how you intend to tackle the problems that are involved or related to animal productions, fishery and provision of infrastructure to manage all these put together? Senator Abdulaziz Usman (Jigawa North- East): Mr. Nominee, your resume is comfortably rich. I actually have only two questions although in your answer to previous questions you had already addressed one, and it was on preservation of perishables like tomatoes, onions and the rest. Before the advent of oil, agriculture was actually the main stay of Nigeria s economy. So many programmes to develop agriculture were carried out in this country. They include Revolution, Operation Feed the Nation, Agricultural Development Programmes or Projects, Accelerated Wheat Programmes and the rest. To me, they are all in vain because agriculture has still not been developed. Mr. Nominee, there is one thing that is lacking, and that is farmers motivation. I can recall that during the Accelerated Wheat Programme, when we introduced wheat programmes in Nigeria, America even said that our wheat cannot make flour. After that we found out that our wheat was so rich and it could do everything that wheat is meant to be done. Our farmers bought wheat at high price and after the production, our farmers were not motivated on produce prices. What do you think can be done to motivate our farmers so that old and young can go into agriculture as a business? Senator Olubunmi Adetunbi (Ekiti North): Mr. Nominee, we have a situation in Nigeria where the farmers leave in the States; the land for agriculture is in the States. I want to imagine that if you are a Federal Minister of Agriculture, you will be a Minister that does not have farmers, the Federal Government does not have land and it does not control the farmers, yet it has the deepest purse for transforming agriculture.

9 0517 The Federal Government has the largest stock of fertilizer in this country year in year out and the States are waiting at the mercy of the Federal Government to have access to fertilizer. There is no Federal Government farmer; there is no Federal Government land yet it has the biggest purse for transforming agriculture more than all the States put together can afford. As the Federal Minister of Agriculture in this scenario, I want you to tell us your analysis of the agricultural sector in terms of the challenges and problems such that nobody here can fault. But the issue is, how do we get a Federal Government to transform agriculture where the farmers are in the States and the land is in the States? We have a case of Kwara State here but the sheer motivation of a sitting Governor was able to do interesting things. In Tourism, we had a Governor in Cross River who by sheer vision and energy was able to affect tourism with minimal input from the Federal Government. As a matter of fact, most of the constraints on the way of these State Governments actually achieving this kind of vision are due to externalities that are largely accounted for by federal policies whether inadequate or constraining. I would like you, Mr. Nominee, to tell us - sitting on a Chair of the Minister of Agriculture, how you intend to motivate the States, the private sector and the agricultural industries that will drive these value chains to behave differently from the way they are behaving now? It is important that we get to know this. You were fortunate to have worked with the Central Bank on the Nigeria Incentive-based Risk Sharing for Agricultural Lending (NISRAL). It is a wonderful initiative. I would like you to explain to Nigerians how this would work differently from the ineffective Agricultural Lending Scheme, the ACGSF. ACGSF is almost 30 years now; but only five banks are lending under that scheme. They are the so called old generation banks. The new generation banks under the liberalised financial sector will not go into agriculture. In those days, I worked under that scheme, the banks were ready to be penalised for not lending into agriculture than actually lending for other purposes. On the issue of finance, what is your reform agenda for the Nigerian Agricultural Corporative and Rural Development Bank? That is the most specialised Agricultural Lending Institution in this country. It has gone in and out of liquidation, and as we speak, it is awaiting perhaps the third round of reform. Presently, farmers are not benefiting from that. Lastly, Nigeria has a lot of Agricultural Research Institutes that are producing research outputs that are not turning into agricultural productivity. The whole concept of putting research into use; how do you intend to drive this kind of productivity enhancing research for our agricultural sector in the private sector? Dr. Akinwunmi Ayo Adesina: Thank you distinguished Senators for all those questions. Let me start with the question from Senator Solomon Ganiyu. Agriculture is a practical business. People talked about policies for agriculture. Farmers do not eat policy papers; farmers eat food. Let me give you some practical experiences of doing that for other countries and what I am doing for my own country. For instance, Malawi as many of you know is a very poor country; perhaps, the poorest in Africa. When I was working in Rockefeller Foundation, I was a Regional Director for Southern Africa Region and Malawi was one of the countries for which I was responsible. The mission of Rockefeller Foundation at that time was to improve the lives and livelihoods of the poor. In other words, we invest in Malawi, where structurally, the productivity is so low. Access to land is very low because of high population density and there was huge amount of poverty. I am a firm believer in agriculture. Agriculture is seed and fertilizer is actually nutrient. If all I have is a plot that is about the size of this place, if I use the right seed, the right fertilizer, the right management practices, I would be able to double productivity with the right technical change; there is no doubt about it. In the case of Malawi, I advised Malawian government to subsidise and support their farmers. This is very important because if you look at the old city countries, they provide $267 billion a year for their farmers. These are not just farmers but rich farmers. Therefore, if you can provide subsidies as support for rich farmers, why not for poor farmers? The issue is that the subsidy provided must produce a commensurate output. It is not the input but the impact that matters. So we advised the Malawian government to support their farmers because the farmers were suffering. The President of the country took our advice and supported their farmers. They have access to seed, fertilizers and some essential seeds.

10 Then what happened? Malawi that has been always food dependent for the last six years, has been a net exporter of food. Malawi gave food aid for the first time its history to Lesotho and Switzerland. It exported 400,000 tons of maize to Zimbabwe. Why? Those are the kind of practical policies I am known for. When people talk of Structural Adjustment, is it structural adjustment which is a way to support our farmers? Extension and infrastructural investment were not there. We could no longer have market and support the marketing system for farmers. Essentially, what we are living in is a situation where we have institutional abandonment for farmers. I would not accept that because structures and institutional policies must work for our farmers, the same way it works for farmers in Europe and the United States. So, Malawi and agriculture is now on a trajectory offshoot and I have a small role to play in that. Let me give you an example of what happened in Tanzania. I was at World Economic Forum in South Africa with Governor Sanusi Lamido and we presented the research which I will talk about in a moment to all the global CEOs and the Presidents there. Everybody including the President of Tanzania was excited for Nigeria about the research and he said, what we have in Nigeria is the same thing as Tanzania. We support the development of agro dealer network. In Africa, one of the main problems is that if you go into your Constituency, you can find Coca-Cola, Pepsi and any other mineral drinks but you will not find seeds or fertilizers. Farmers have to travel long distances to get these things. Therefore, I actually spearheaded the development of what we call Agro dealers. These are rural shops that are selling the Fanta and Coke. We trained them to understand seed, fertilizer; how to store it, how to sell it and how to advise farmers and the youths. It is leading today to hundreds of millions of seeds and fertilizer being moved into rural areas in Nigeria and in several other countries. People told me that I am probably too passionate about subsidies to African farmers. Yes, I am, but the issue is not subsidies but how it is used. If you tell us not to use subsidies, I will tell you, in the global environment that we are actually in a poverty tract situation. What we need is growth enhancement support. If somebody is sinking in a pool, the first thing to do is to bring the persons head above the water. If I am confirmed by the 10 distinguished Senate, I would work assiduously for the interest of our farmers because I believe that we have to unlock that potential with good policies. Let me say something about market institutions to cap in some of the questions. We used to have Marketing Board in this country. When I was growing up as a kid, we have Cocoa House in Ibadan and it was filled with cocoa. In 1965 to 1974 unless you are in a plane or helicopter, you could hardly see it because of the reflections that you get in the corrugated iron roofs that are over the many villages around the city, why? This is because there were cash crops that are working. Cocoa, palm oil, cashew, kola nuts, and rubbers were working. If you fly over the same place today, maybe since 80s till date, what would you find? You will find that the rich crops extinct. They are actually oxidized. You can always land your plane on it thinking it is a runway. The reason is because the cash crops have failed, cocoa has collapsed. Today, we account for less than two per cent whether is cocoa, whether it is cotton, whether it is groundnut, whether it is cashew nuts. We have done a little bit better; I must congratulate the Nigerian Investment Production Council. Last year, they had $2.3 billion worth of non-oil export, 67 per cent of that, I believe, was actually from agriculture. We have so much to do. What I am saying in market institution is that if, for instance, you are an American farmer today, before you plant a seed you are protected. If you sell the produce to the global market, there is a difference because if the global market price falls, you will be given what is called a deficiency payment. It is the difference between the state price and the global price. If there is a storm like we had in Lagos, you are protected, but our farmers are not. It is almost as if someone is taken and put in a canoe and left at to drift. We cannot have a situation like that in Nigeria. We have to guard market institutions that work with our farmers. But those market institutions do not have to be the same market involved as we have before because those were our problem in the sense that they were not providing value for our farmers; they were attacking price and were loaded in terms of bureaucracy. Since we were talking about value chain, we would look at our market institution that understand the value chain and the nature of the market; the growing standard of the market; how much is the volume that is needed; when is it needed; which

11 0521 market do we target; how do we have comparative pricing policy and who are those that are competing with us? We need to think about those market institutions collectively. I am sure you would have time to bring me back to this august House to answer questions about that. Those market institutions at this point in time should be led by the private sector. They will provide access to finance and market information. Why do I believe this? I believe this because of Kenya. If you look at horticultures in Kenya, Kenya is the largest exporter of horticulture in the world. They have an agency they called HKDA (Horticulture Development Authority for Kenya), it is private sector led, government does not lead it. Today, it is the largest player in the world. Agriculture is one of my priorities; and I have been talking to my colleagues about it. Because of the networks of agro dealers that I said, we have paid for them, the government decided to use the short trip programme working through its agro dealers. In 2010 seven hundred thousand farmers produced five million tons of maize. Such is the kind of approach that I bring. My approach is entrepreneurial, innovative, strategic and market driven. As I said before, agriculture is not a development programme. As regards the distinguished Senator s question on ageing farmers, it is one of the things that make me actually quite restless; it keeps me up at night for Nigeria, why? The reason is this; the level of our decision in our agricultural sector is so bad. We have an agro-farming population sometimes sixty/seventy as farmers, yet have a bugling situation of unemployment in this country. If you look at the unemployment data, what do we find there? You would notice in that situation that 80 per cent of unemployment we have in this country right now is for those that are between ages 15 and per cent of that is for those that are between ages 14 and 24. If you look at it from a geo-political sense, because you are all distinguished Senators, all over our father s land, if you look all the way to the North East, the unemployment level is 29 per cent. If you look at the North West, it is 20 per cent, you go to South South, it is 19 per cent. South West, 15 per cent, in the middle, North Central, it is 9 per cent. I want to say that this is both a blessing and difficulty Agro-allied industries can really put a lot of people into jobs and create opportunity for them. Secondly, the youths you are talking about, when you asked a question, you said, where do you find the youths? The youths are actually there, but they are not interested in agriculture. The reason they are not interested in agriculture is because agriculture is not working. Yesterday, I was talking to a distinguished Senator from my State; he said nothing ventured, nothing had; that happened to be the motto actually of Ejigbo Baptist High School, where I schooled. But today, it has changed; nothing had nothing ventured, which means if I cannot make money from agriculture why should I care. Basically what we have to do with our youths are as follows: The first thing is to have an aggressive programme for youths to have business in Nigeria. Second is to have access to land, as one of the distinguished Senators mentioned. Entrepreneurship capacity building for these youths, providing them incentives especially, fiscal incentives to be able to get affordable loans to actually get into these businesses, whether it is value added, aquaculture or poultry. We have the skills but we need to unlock that capacity. I want to say that the President has said that building the future of our nation depends on the youth. The President is very passionate about that. We even put in place an aggressive programme to deal with the question at least, from the agricultural side of unemployment of our youths. The Niger Delta is where we have to do quite a lot. Others are the North East, North West, South West and South South; we must have a focus on this. I want to say something with respect to the question of a distinguished Senator on animal production. This is very important. Nigeria for example, produces about 150 to almost 200,000,000 birds. Nigeria is very good right now in terms of aquaculture. We have found a situation where these things are important because of rapid organization and demand for protein products. We have a situation with respect to our herds; dealing with the issues of cattle, sheep and goats. Why is it a blessing? First, the distinguished Senator cited the example of the Governor of Kwara State who did a brilliant job on agricultural transformation in Kwara. So, If 9 per cent are unemployed, it means we cannot reduced unemployment through agricultural transformation. 11 First and foremost, it is the vulnerability of these farmers weather. If there is a drought in the North today, those farmers will lose their herds. I believe that Nigerian farmers should be provided with insurance. Why it is that pastorals do not have insurance? We cannot provide them with insurance.