Having served Nigeria at various times as Governor of Ebonyi State, Minister of Education and Senator at the National Assembly from 2015 to 2023, Senator Sam Egwu is no stranger to Nigeria politics and governance. In this interview with BIYI ADEGOROYE, the agronomist and farmer assesses the performance of the present government, Nigeria’s agricultural development programmes and the crisis in his party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)

There is a global move towards agric development for subsistence and export. How well do you think Nigeria has joined this trend?

It cannot be said that Nigeria has joined the trend, especially with the level of government’s commitment to and encouragement of the sector, especially with the activities of herdsmen who make farmlands insecure, and such issues as climate change. You are aware of the frequent killing of farmers in various parts of the country, besides the high cost of farm inputs.

For instance, now, what is the government doing to assist those of us in the poultry sector? Practically nothing, and as a result, most of the poultry farms, including my own, have been closed down, because of the high cost of materials, especially poultry feed. If you make any investment in it, you can hardly recover your cost.

In a situation like that we expect the government to meet us to ask how they can come in, but they are not doing that. Instead, some time ago where maize was the raw material for feed production, the Poultry Farmers’ Association was boycotted by the government which issued import licenses to foreigners to bring the feeds, and the poultry farmers had to go and buy from Lebanese who are also in agriculture. So, in terms of supporting, with say license and all that, the main people within that sector were boycotted – not by this government in any way, but the last one.

That is one typical example, and the second is when they give you a loan as a way of supporting you, it is at commercial rate, and the banks will be after you to repay the loan within one or two years, and if you don’t, they will go after you. Of course, the interest will be accumulating. I am talking from experience. Again, when the government chooses to intervene, the supervision of the implementation is zero. The consultants, ministries and parastatals that are in charge of this are looking after their own pockets, to the detriment of the real farmers. That is the issue we have with the agric sector.

Well, in some areas, government has been trying to provide the enabling environment, especially, in the northern part of the country, through the irrigation system, but you find out like the problem in other sectors, it is not the amount that matters, but what is important is the implementation, making sure that the money, even if its is N1 goes to the target audience. It is like when the World Bank gives you money, 70 per cent of it goes into advocacy, travels, symposium, while the main issue is suffering. So, the government has to rethink and find a way to actually address the issue with the farmers directly, and it cuts across all sectors.

Government spends a lot of money on (agric)policies, but how does this impact lives at the grassroots? Even the poultry issue, when we had bird flu, how did the government come to our aid? When they give you money, they are all over you to pay back, not asking how they can assist you to mitigate the problem you have, how do we train staff, and send our experts to assist? So, it becomes a problem.

As a specialist in that area, what examples can we borrow from developed countries, especially in the area of agriculture development?

The only way to do it is to deal with the real farmers in that sector and try as much as possible to eliminate these intermediaries. First of all, the government should identify the people that are in the sector – the Nigerian Farmers Association, the Poultry Farmers Association and deal with them directly.

If the government comes up to provide support funds to farmers now, you will discover that all manners of people outside farming will come out to hijack the whole thing, while the real farmers will not be there, maybe because they don’t have the long leg. Government should identify the real farmers and deal with them directly because they know where the shoe pinches. That way, the funds will go to the real people, and they should make sure they use experts in many areas of agriculture to deal with the people in agriculture, not appointing somebody who studied History as Agric consultants.

They should make funds available to support farmers and assist them with experts to ensure that the funds are utilised for desired purpose. They should also provide machinery to enable farmers to cultivate several hecters of land. Today, most of our farmers are getting old and the cost of labour is high, so it is mechanized farming that will help us out of it. That is what is done in developed countries.

Mechanized farming is very common in the North, but not so much in the South. How can this be replicated down South?

The North has large areas of land. In the North, you can see a farmer having over 100 hectares of land, but here, we have land limitations. Thirdly, the government has always supported the North in the area of agriculture. For example, they have a number of dams to support year-round farming. Here in the South, we don’t have a single dam. In the North, they have an irrigation system; they have a lot of dams, the government is pumping a lot of money there and their weather is favourable too. That is why the North is almost the food basket of the country.

Here in the South, even if the government wants to support us, we don’t have the privilege of a large acreage of land where we can deploy resources. Even when you have it, there are lots of disputes over land and the other one is the climate. Ours is a rainforest, but up North, there is Savannah, and all that and the government supports them. We depend on the rainy season here to plant, outside that, there is nothing, but there, they grow all year-round, because the dams are there.

Nigeria has not been in the wont of agricultural policies. Between 2011 and 2015, under Dr. Akinwumi Adesina as Minister of Agric, there were several reforms designed to modernize the agricultural sector. Now, the current government has agro-business development which centers around the National Food Production Programme and River Basin Development Authority. What impact have these made?

I think, to be honest with you, Dr. Adesina’s Agric development policy as Minister of Agric was merely a media hype. I don’t think anything came out of it. During his tenure as minister, most of the things he introduced did not make any impact. On the E-Wallet system for fertilizer distribution, a lot of taxpayers’ money was used in buying phones which they said they distributed to 14 million farmers. Those things were a waste of money.

This is because a lot of farmers had their own phones, and those phones were to be used to receive alerts that fertilizers had been allocated to them. When they got the alert, they now went to the local government secretariat to collect it. How many people benefited from the policy? In any case, a lot of people already had their phones, so why didn’t they collect their phone numbers and send alerts to them for the distribution of the fertilizer?

Again, look at cost implications. Take for instance, a lot of people are living in the communities as small holder farmers, and they had to travel to their local government secretariats which could be about 20 kilometers away, to go and collect two bags of fertilizer allocated to them. Look at the cost of transportation to go and collect the two bags which could be more than the cost of the fertilizer. So, for me that policy does not make any sense.

The same thing is applicable to the agro-business policy along with the much-talk-about private partnership. These things are just hoarse. Can they show me what the policy has yielded? You want to have youth empowerment, all these as mere academic programmes designed just to impress the people, and at the end of the day it is not sustainable, but will just end up at the launching. I have not seen any single one- whether it is innovation in agricultural farming, staple crop processing zones, focus on food security and inclusion – none of them has seen the light of day or made any impact.

How do you see the revelation that the 2025 budget was padded to the tune of N6 trillion and the bulk of it was passed through the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development?

I didn’t see that. But what is actually happening is that from my experience, the Ministry of Agriculture, especially the river basins authorities and parastatals, by the time the National Assembly comes out with its constituency projects, they normally push them through the Ministry of Agriculture. So, actually most of them are not original projects of the Ministry, rather, they are put their as constituency projects for National Assembly members.

And because of that, many of the river basins or parastatals leave their mandate to do those projects. So, it is not the fault of the Ministry but those parastatals that have those projects. And it will interest you to know that the Minister and the Minister of State for Agric are very passionate, having been former senators and are agriculturists. In fact, Senator Sabi, the Minister of State, worked in the Ministry of Agriculture all his life. So, he knows what he is doing, what is left is for the projects to be implemented for the benefit of the people. Government has very beautiful projects, the issue is about implementation.

Insecurity, as you said earlier, has affected food security. How do you think this can be addressed?

The only way is for the government to provide security for the people in conformity with the government’s constitutional duties, to the effect that the welfare and security of the people shall be the priority of the government. Until that security is provided, many of the farmers will abandon the farms, because their life is important to them.

We have heard about several cases where farmers were killed on their farms. I understand that in some parts of the North, farmers pay tax to bandits in order to allow them to farm. So, until the government tackles this issue of insecurity so that people can go to their farms and grow their crops, without fear of being killed or kidnapped, it will be difficult to have food security.

Now to politics. Your party, the PDP has been enmeshed in one crisis after another in the last three years? How are you leaders addressing it?

The problem of PDP is bad leadership. It is as simple as that. It is said that the party is supreme, but in its implementation, you will see individuals, some very powerful leaders dictating to the party, instead of abiding by the party constitution. There are rules governing the party but instead of following them, they (the leadership) are very weak.

What we are seeing in Nigeria is the emergence of powerful individuals against powerful institutions. You see, if we have a leadership of the PDP that is strong, that does not look at anybody’s face, that wants to follow the rule of law and our constitution, this thing would not have happened.

There are lots of people that need to be sanctioned, but because of financial inducement, we are not doing it. So, that is exactly the problem with the party. And you see, this issue is not peculiar to PDP, but more pronounced in it, because it is the major opposition party. Every other party has its problem, even the All Progressives Congress (APC), does; LP and NNPP do, even the SDP, they all have the same problem. It is the issue of internal democracy.

But the PDP case is worse, because it would have offered credible opposition to the government having been in power for 16 years. And it is the only party that has members at the grassroots in all parts of the country. Some of those who populate APC today are former members of the PDP who defected because, some people want to be wherever it is happening. Not because they believe in the country, not because of ideology or conviction, but because to them, politics is their market, hence they move to wherever is flourishing, which is very unfortunate. The PDP issue is very unfortunate.

Individuals now rise against the party and the party does not have the stamina to say ‘no, this is not what our constitution says.’ The fact is anyone who violates the party’s constitution should be sanctioned. There are penalties for anti-party activities and these must be applied.

Are you not suspicious of the presence of Fifth Columnists in the party?

Of course, you cannot rule that out, because the party in power can do anything to make sure that they weaken the opposition. You don’t blame them, because it is part of politics. But it is our own position to say ‘no, we won’t allow a Fifth Columnist to come and destroy us.’ So, the issue of PDP is purely leadership. If the leadership can stand up today and say ‘look, we want to follow the constitution of the party, we want to follow rule of law, no matter who you are,’ and they are able to discipline erring ones, impose sanctions, all these things will end. But when you are not have the strong will to do that, you put us where we are now.

This administration will be two years old next week, what is your assessment- looking at the economy, security and governance?

Actually, if I tell you that it is rosy, I will be deceiving myself. Things have gotten bad; things are getting worse by the day. You and I know that if you go to the market, inflation has eaten deep into our resources. But then, it is not peculiar to Nigeria, because all these have been happening in every other country. I like being objective.

I also believe that based on the resources we have in this country, human, material and natural, Nigeria should have been able to do better than it is doing now. We are down the line, but we could have done better. Government is trying, they are doing their best, but their best is not good enough, because it is below our expectation now.

Unemployment is on the high side, insecurity is on the high side; the economy is down the ladder, and so for almost all aspects of everything. It is really difficult. But, I think if we have harnessed our resources properly, we should be able to do better than this.

How do you see the fight against corruption under this government?

Corruption is one cankerworm that has not left us, and until that is addressed squarely, not in camouflage manner, irrespective of who is involved, like Shehu Sani said ‘you are fighting corruption with deodorant, or insecticide…’

General Laughter…

If you want to fight corruption, you have to be holistic about it, and do it in a way that the investigators and prosecutors do a thorough job, because some prosecutors do so purely on political grounds. Sometimes investigations are not properly done, hence cases are thrown out for want of evidence or lack of diligent prosecution.

The fight against corruption should be holistic and thorough, and people who serve in positions of authority should be held accountable. People should be bold enough to speak truth to power. If we do, a lot things happening now will not, because if you create a system that checkmates all these government officials’ unnecessary expenses and behaviours, where they are not accountable to the people, and they get away with whatever they do, it will get to the level of impunity, where people will take as much as they can when they get to public office. If you do otherwise, people will regard you as a fool.

The moment you are in office, everybody expects you to enrich yourself, but some people will continue to do their job diligently and conscientiously, after all, at the end, we will be accountable to God who will give judgment. If you are given the opportunity to serve, you can be clever and smart so that you cover your tracks, but you cannot be smart before God at the end of the day.

And I must say that the press has tried as the watchdogs, but they are also affected by the problems facing Nigeria. They are Nigerians and can do better than they are doing now, but they are trying, but they could have done better.

You were in the Senate. How do you see this Senator Godswill Akpabio/ Natasha-Uduaghan imbroglio?

Well, I don’t have the full details, apart from what I see on social media, but the issue of change of seats is normal. All of us went through that process. There was a day I came to the Senate, (and I used to stay at the aisle), but I saw myself in the centre of a role, and when I asked a question, they told me the change was because of the moment. I had to accept it, though I felt comfortable staying at the aisle, but I saw myself in the middle. That is all I know, but if there is any underlining issue, I cannot say anything about that.

On the final note, how do you see the performance of your governor?

Oh, he is fantastic. The young man is doing well. First of all, the peace of the state is important. When he came into power, he tried to harmonise everybody, irrespective of their political leanings. Before then, there were lots of communal crises here and there, to the extent that some people were being haunted. But he came into power, and he tried to bring everybody together. If there is a function in Ebonyi State today, everybody will be there to participate because the government is about inclusion.

And he looks at the needs of the people and the charter of equity. He tries to look at their issues and goes to communities, empowering them. The young man is trying, in spite of the fact that I am not in APC and cannot go to the APC, because I will remain in PDP, I must state that he is doing a good job and I appreciate what he is doing.