…It looks like the National Water Bill 2020 is part of a grand design to rob current owners of their precious parcels of land and freshwater deposit, writes SIAKA MOMOH.
The Middle East countries, otherwise known as the Gulf States, that are seeking food security have moved into some Sub-Saharan African countries to lease lands to grow food crops for their population. Has it ever occurred to us that the terrorists’ onslaught on Nigeria could be part of a bigger picture to grab our land and fresh water deposit?
National Water Bill
Link this with the controversy surrounding the National Water Bill 2020 which Southern and Middle Belt Forum Leaders strongly oppose because they consider it a move by the Federal Government to take over the water resources of some sections of the country in order to implement the obnoxious rural grazing policy (for herders) through the back door. The implication of this for food security is same as that which Arab land grabbers pose.
No concrete contract
Though no concrete contract has been entered into by Nigeria, reports have it that moves have been made by some powerful Nigerians to draw Nigeria into the race. Enbong Jimie Idiong, chief executive of Global Corp Ltd, was quoted by Reuters to have said “Nigeria has the terrain to provide 100 percent of the Gulf’s food needs”. Nigeria has around 71.2 million hectares of farmland, of which less that 50 percent is being used, according to data from Global Corp Ltd.
“We need investment to fully utilize this land and we will allow the investors to export back 100 percent of the crop and this will create employment opportunities for people in Nigeria. The land could be leased for up to 30 to 40 years at a cost of around $10,000 per hectare for that period,” Idiong said.
Umaru Musa Yar’Adua regime
Informed industry sources reveal that during the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua regime, former Minister of Agriculture, Abba Ruma and former Nigeria’s Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Michael Aondoakaa, discussed the issue of leasing farmlands to Gulf States. However, the discussion was inconclusive as a result of the demise of Yar’Adua.
There is also unconfirmed report that First Trustee, an arm of First bank Plc is involved in a $1.8 billion farmland lease deal between Nigeria and United Arab Emirates.
Views of industry stakeholders
These industry stakeholders have raised their voices against what some now call ‘Arabs land grabs’. Writing on ‘Re-Colonization of Africa through Buying Agricultural Land: Wealthy Nations and their Multinationals on the Rampage’, Akinyi Princess of K’Orinda-Yimbo said: “Africans are being colonized again and this time not with the power of weapons but through Africans themselves selling their continent willingly.
The 99- and 999-year lease – a remnant of colonialists – surely cannot fool anybody. This is equivalent to a full century and/or full millennium which translates into three and a half to thirty-four consecutive generations of Africans”.
For him, “Africans are selling the one natural resource they can’t afford to sell – their land. Especially arable land… The new colonialism is vast in Africa, with the buyers being wealthy countries unable to grow their own food. The Arabs are back fleeing their barren sands to turn Africa into their granary like they did one and a half millennia ago (in Egypt at the time).”
But Muda Yusuf, director-general, Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) thinks differently. He argued: “Currently, there is serious underinvestment in the agricultural sector. Over 80 percent of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the country is in Oil & Gas and the Telecoms sectors. There is virtually no FDI in the agricultural sector. The country has abundant arable land most of which is lying idle. We need all the investment we can get in agriculture…
For Obiora Madu, chief of Multimix Academy, a frontline import/export training institute who endorsed the Arab project said: “I do not have any problem with this situation. What is the percentage of arable land in Nigeria currently being cultivated? Agriculture stands as the only way out of the mass unemployment situation. The Arabs will not bring all the workers from their country neither will they take the land when they are going. I am sure that the multiplier effect of their activity will have positive impact on the GDP as well as employment.
“Contract farming is happening everywhere else in the world but oil has become a stumbling block to Agriculture in Nigeria. I do not agree with the term land grabs. We met this land and we will leave it when we are going. If the Arabs are going to improve our lives by utilizing a resource we abandoned, so be it. When the Zimbabwean farmers were coming to Kwara state people said the same thing but now the state is the better for it,” Madu disclosed.
Corroborating their views, Lanre Talabi of Talon (Nigeria) Limited, an agribusiness research, development and consultancy company, disclosed that “If Arabs do not use the land who will? Our investors are agro investment shy and we are short of agribusiness managers and funds are difficult to secure in the banks. We in Talon Agro know what to do in terms of project management in agriculture. Let the Arabs come o.”
Gulf States in the lead of buyers
The Gulf States are said to be in the lead in this new investment. Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar, controlling about 45 percent of the world’s oil, are buying up agricultural land in Egypt, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Zambia, and Uganda as well as in Cambodia, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Russia.
Even South Korea is reported to have grabbed a staggering 960,000 hectares in Sudan, the largest country in Africa, where at least six other rich countries are said to have secured large land-holding – and precisely where the local population is among the hungriest and least secure in the world.
The Saudis too are reported to be negotiating 500,000 hectares in Tanzania. Companies for the United Arab Emirates have snapped up 324,000 hectares in Pakistan. Highly populated countries like China, South Korea and India have acquired swathes of African farmland to produce food for export.
India too, is said to have recently lowered tariffs for Ethiopian commodities that could enter India after the Indian government lent money to 80 Indian companies to buy 350,000 hectares of farmland in Africa, particularly huge tracts in Kenya, Mozambique and Ethiopia.
Philippe Heilberg, a US businessman, has laid claim to 4,000 square kilometre of fertile territory in a deal with the family of a notorious warlord in south Sudan where land is not in short supply.
Heilberg, a former Wall Street banker is reported to be buying up huge tracts of land in Sudan. Analysts argue European Union would soon cut off the unsustainable farm subsidies and that President Barack Obama also proposes to cut off massive funding to unsustainable subsidies to American farmers.
The result, according to them, would be a huge demand for foodstuff in the future. They argue the Sudanese, Nigerians and other poor countries think they make wise investments today by mortgaging their farmlands would quickly realise that they have short-changed themselves. They would simply discover that a God-given resource that would constitute a strong bargaining chip has been taken out of their hands of forever.
The grabbed hectares of land are used mostly to grow staples or biofuels—wheat, maize, rice, jatropha. The Egyptian and South Korean projects in Sudan are both for wheat. Libya has leased 100,000 hectares of Mali for rice. By contrast, in the past, farming ventures was for cash crops (coffee, tea, sugar or bananas).
Until now, foreign farming investment was usually private: private investors bought land from private owners. That process has continued, particularly the snapping up of privatised land in the former Soviet Union.
Reports have it that the majority of the new deals have been government-to-government. The acquirers are foreign regimes or companies closely tied to them, such as sovereign-wealth funds. The sellers are host governments dispensing land they nominally own.
Buying off land and limited fresh water
Buying off land means buying off limited fresh water deposit. This invariably means the seller mortgaging its scarce fresh water deposit. Only a few know this. In fact, water scarcity was largely responsible for Saudi Arabia and a number of Arab countries moving out to grab land for farming…
In 2008, Saudi Arabia abandoned its food self-sufficiency programme when it discovered that farmers were burning their way through water—which comes from a non-replenishable aquifer below the Arabian sands. Other Gulf States followed suit. The same can be said of China and South Korea who followed suit; countries not usually associated with water shortages but where agricultural expansion has been draining dry breadbasket areas like the North China Plain.
It is noteworthy to state that 97.5 percent of water globally is salt water, covering 1.365 billion kilometres cubic feet whilst 2.5 percent is fresh water covering 35 million kilometres cubic feet. Also, 70 per cent of world fresh water goes to agriculture, 20 per cent to industry, and 10 per cent for human consumption.
Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, the chairman of Nestlé, claims: “The purchases weren’t about land, but water. For with the land comes the right to withdraw the water linked to it, in most countries essentially a freebie that increasingly could be the most valuable part of the deal.” He calls it “the great water grab.
This Throwback piece by Siaka Momoh. was first published in RealSector Digest.com in March 2014.
