Photo credit: Daily post
Nigeria has about 30 airports and various expressways, with the controversial Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway still under construction at $12.5 billion.
While I won’t say airports and expressways are not desirable, I know, not feel, that they are not as useful as agricultural estates.
National priorities must follow national emergencies, and Nigeria’s most urgent emergencies are food insecurity, rural poverty, unemployment, and inflation. Farm estates address all these more directly than airports and expressways ever could.
I tend to think there’s no hunger in the state houses and the hangers-on who should tell the people in power the happenings in the country are shy of doing so because they may lose their comfortable crumbs at the feet of their dining tables. If it were not so, the Nigerian authorities would have realized that food security is a national security issue.
They would have made moves to increase food production, reduce inflation, and cushion the country against global supply shocks.
Indeed, do they know that a country that can’t feed itself is strategically weak, no matter how many runways or expressways it has?
Do they even care about the poor?
Once the voting season is over, they withdraw into their palaces in the GRAs and forget about them, knowing they are being weaponized with hunger to be the foot soldiers of the politicians. They could then afford to build airports and expressways, which create limited, highly specialized jobs while farm estates absorb large numbers of youths and semi-skilled workers, revitalize rural economies, and reduce migration pressure on cities and the desperation that fuels crime and insecurity.
Do they know farm estates create faster and broader economic multiplier effects?
Agriculture feeds into agro-processing, transportation, storage and packaging, and local manufacturing. One farm estate activates an entire value chain, while an airport often becomes an isolated prestige project.
Do they realize that farm estates bring equity and inclusion?
The common man may not have any business with airports because they mainly serve business elites, politicians and international travellers. On the other hand, farm estates serve smallholders, women, youths and food markets nationwide.
Public investment should first touch the majority, not the few.
In any case, Nigeria has multiple unused airports; those operating are doing so at a loss (except for a few). Yet states are building airports without traffic, cargo demand, or airline interest.
At this stage, when millions of Nigerians are hungry, airports should not be political monuments, contract vehicles or prestige symbols.
At this stage of Nigeria’s development, rather than concentrating on airports and expressways, we ought to be building productive capacity in terms of farm estates, irrigation and storage. We should be developing agro-processing and logistics, as well as improving roads and rail to facilitate the movement of goods.
We should not stop at just producing; we should add value to our farm products. For instance, I don’t think Nigeria is still producing cocoa at economic value. It would be nice if we not only resume production of cocoa seeds but also add value to it. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to buy chocolate made in Nigeria?
It is only then that our airports and expressways would be useful.
