Stages of Transformation of Agriculture in Nigeria since the Colonial Era to Date
Introduction
The transformation
stages of agriculture in Nigeria are intertwined with its political history.
This will be discussed broadly in the context of
the varying constitutional frame works, viz: colonial era, the internal
self-government and the post-1960 periods accordingly.
The Events of the Period of Colonial
Administration
The period of
the colonial administration in Nigeria, 1861-1960, was punctuated by rather ad
hoc attention to agricultural development. During the era, considerable emphasis
was placed on research and extension services. The first notable activity of
the era was the establishment of a botanical research station in Lagos by Sir
Claude Mcdonald in 1893. This was followed by the acquisition of 10.4 kms of
land in 1899 by the British Cotton Growing Association (BCGA) for experimental work
on cotton and named the experimental area Moor Plantation in lbadan. In 1912, a
Department of Agriculture was established in each of the then Southern and
Northern Nigeria, but the activities of the Department were virtually suspended
between 1913 and 1921 as a result of the First World War and its aftermath. From
the early 1920s to the mid-1930s, there was a resurgence of activities and this
period has been called the 'Faulkner Strip Layout' era in honour of the Director
of Agriculture, Mr. O.T. Faulkner, who devised a statistical design for
experimental trials in green manuring, fertilizer projects, rotational cropping
systems and livestock feeding. From the late 1930s to the mid-1940s, there were
significant intensification and expansion of research activities, and extension
and training programmes of the Agricultural Departments.
Additional facilities
for training of junior staff in agriculture were provided, as well as
scholarships for agricultural students in Yaba Higher College and Imperial College
of Tropical Agriculture in Trinidad. The intensification of hostilities during the
Second World War (1939-45) led to the slowing down of activities and the call
to Departments of Agriculture to play increasing roles in the production of
food for the army and civilians in the country and the Empire.
Production of
export crops like palm products and rubber which could not be obtained from Malaysia
as a result of Japanese war activities in South-East Asia, and such food items
as sugar, wheat, milk, eggs, vegetables, Irish potatoes and rice whose importation
was prevented by naval blockade of the high seas increased. A special production
section of the Department of Agriculture was set up to deal with the situation.
On the research side, attention was devoted largely to the possibilities of
evolving permanent systems of agriculture that were capable of replacing
rotational bush-fallowing systems prevalent in the country and realizing the promises
of mixed farming in the north. During this period, the WAIFOR (West African
Institute for Oil Palm Research) in Benin was started and the research on cocoa
was intensified at Moor Plantation, Owena near Ondo and at Onigambari near
lbadan.
Achievements
of the period include the development of 'Alien Cotton' in the south; rice
cultivation in the Sokoto, Niger, llorin, Abeokuta Colony and Ondo provinces;
the introduction of wheat cultivation in the more northern parts of the
northern provinces; the expansion of production of such export crops as cocoa, palm
oil and groundnut; development of agricultural implements as well as designing
farm buildings; intensification of horticultural activities; the development of
a marketing section of the Department; the extension of the Produce.
There was inspection
Service to cover all principal export crops; investigations into the
possibilities for organized land settlement schemes and investigations into the
possibilities of irrigation in northern Nigeria. The period of Internal Self Government,
1951 60 began with the regionalization of the Departments of Agriculture in
1951, with a Director and an Inspector-General of Agriculture in each region.
By October 1954, the post of Inspector General of Agriculture was abolished as
a result of constitutional developments which led to independence of the Regional
Departments.
The Federal
Department of Agricultural Research was retained since constitutional
provisions placed agricultural research on the concurrent legislative list,
while extension work remained a regional responsibility. The research findings
of the Federal Research Stations were to be transmitted through Regional
ministries responsible for agriculture and natural resources. There was also the
setting up, in 1955, of a Technical Committee of the Council of Natural
Resources made up of Federal and Regional Ministers and officials for the formulation
of national research programmes as well as the co-ordination of Federal and
Regional research activities. Regionalization of agriculture created a great awareness
of the need for intensification of activities in both the research and
extension fields. This led the Regions to expand, considerably, their research
and extension activities in agriculture.
The Events of the Post-Colonial
Administration
The post-1960
was one of extensive planning and regional competition in agriculture.
Concentration of attention on commodity exports, the utilization of taxation
policy by the Marketing Boards as an instrument of development finance, and the
belief that food production activities could take care of themselves without
any governmental intervention, became the official farm policy. Under regional
independence, the agricultural history of the nation entered a new phase of modification
of traditional practices, in view of the incapacity of food production to meet
the needs of the rising population and the inability of producers to reinvest
in land. These maladies were worsened by the inability of the then Federal
Government to play a leading role in the nation's agricultural modernization.
Before the middle of the 1960s, a Federal Ministry of
Agriculture
and Natural Resources was set up, and a phase of consolidation and
co-ordination of projects for agricultural development began.
In 1966,
Federal initiative and control of the nation's agriculture were set in motion.
This step in the right direction became more manifest with the creation, in
1967, of 12 States and the increased efforts to evolve a co-ordinated perspective
for agricultural development in Nigeria.
There were
also a number of agricultural development intervention experiments, notably:
(i) Operation
Feed the Nation, launched in 1976;
(ii) River
Basin and Rural Development
Authorities,
established in 1976; (vii) Green
Revolution
Programme, inaugurated in 1980; and
(viii) The
World Bank-funded Agricultural Development Projects.
While each of
the above programmes sought to improve food production, the ADPs represented
the first major practical demonstration of the integrated appro ach to agricultural
development in Nigeria. The experiment which started with World Bank funding,
with projects at Funtua (1974), Gusau
(1974) and
Gombe (1974), blossomed into Ayangba (1977), Lafia (1977), Bida (1979), llorin (1980),
Ekiti-Akoko (1981) and Oyo-North (1982) agricultural development projects.
Following successful negotiations for
multi-state agricultural development projects with the World Bank, each state
of the country, and the federal capital,
Abuja now has
one ADP. The years since the early 1960s have also witnessed the establishment
of several agricultural research institutes and their extension research liaison
services. Some of the major institutions are:
(i)
Agricultural
Extension and Research stock production and fisheries production in Nigeria
Liaison Service (AERLS) at the Ahmadu in recent years, is presented in the next
two chap Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, established in 1963;
(ii)
The
International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), at lbadan and;
(iii)
International
Livestock Centre for Africa (ILCA).
The Foreign Exchange Earnings
Generated for Nigeria by the Trade in the Major Agricultural Products
It can be observed that earnings increased substantially from 1950, as
Nigeria was approaching independence. The promotion of major agricultural goods
for export (cash crops), generated substantial foreign exchange for the
government, but it created problems in some other aspects of the economy. In
particular, it left the production of food crops in the hands of peasant
households who generally worked on small plots of land, with low inefficient
technologies. Thus, the emphasis on cash crops production created the
conditions for the food insecurity which the country later experienced. With
the growth of foreign trade came the need of modern financial institutions,
especially banks, mainly from Britain.
Among the early banks were the British Bank of West Africa (now First
Bank of Nigeria PLC), and Barclays Bank (now Union Bank of Nigeria PLC). These
banks brought with them British payment instruments, especially silver coins,
and the modern practice of banking. Subsequently, several new banks also
emerged, but because most of the new banks were ill-equipped, they soon failed,
(Nwankwo, 1980). This experience, and several other factors, led to the
establishment of the Central Bank of Nigeria in 1958 to, among other things,
regulates developments in the financial sector.
References:
- FMARD (2002)” “Agriculture in Nigeria: Policy (Before and Now) Analysis of the Existing (1988) Agricultural Policy and the Revised Policy” Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural development, Abuja.
- National Development Planning in Nigeria: An Endless Search for Appropriate Development Strategy; by Iheanacho, E. N.,
Department of Political
Science Imo State University, Owerri, Nigeria.
- The Agricultural Sector and Nigeria’s Development: Comparative Perspectives from the Brazilian Agro-Industrial Economy, 1960-1995; By Olukoya Ogen.
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