Enugu’s revamped palm plantations and agro economy

The sound of machines that sunny Wednesday afternoon was a grating oddity amid the calming swish of the surrounding palm plantations, as workers fed more palm nuts into the oil extractor. “Before the Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi administration, not many people knew that there are oil palm plantations in Enugu State,” Robinson Odo explained, his voice a tad raised to avoid it being drowned out by the revving engine. Given the sheer size of the oil palm plantation – 599 hectares – where Odo was conducting this facility tour, that claim seemed somewhat implausible. But it is not. Knowledge of their existence dipped as the economic relevance of oil palm, once the commercial lifeline of the Eastern Region in the First Republic, was overshadowed by petroleum and the attendant wealth it brought to Nigeria’s coffers. However, the worsening economic challenges of the post-oil boom years have over the years resulted in shrinking funds available for sharing between the federal government and states of the federation.

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So it was quite fitting that the tour of the plantations took place just a few days before the World Food Day, a programme of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization which seeks to promote global awareness on the problem of hunger, malnutrition and poverty, as well as focus attention on agriculture and food production.
“Even from a historical perspective, we can appreciate the economic potential of agriculture, especially oil palm. During the First Republic, the economy of the Eastern Region was mostly sustained by oil palm,” said Odo, managing director of Enugu State United Palm Products Ltd and the man tasked with restoring the plantations’ commercial viability. It is a task he carries out enthusiastically. “There is no byproduct of the palm fruit that can be considered as waste,” he declared. Odo is optimistic that income from export of palm oil and its allied products will substantially reduce Enugu State’s dependence on the monthly federal allocation.
He wasn’t exaggerating. According to GreenPalm, a trade name of United Kingdom-based Book & Claim Ltd, “palm oil and palm kernel oil based ingredients are found in approximately 50% of products on supermarket shelves, including food and non-food items.” It further outlines market segments where the use of oil palm produce is predominant: consumer retail and snack manufacturers; personal care and cosmetics; biofuel and energy; animal feed; pharmaceuticals, etc.
Indeed, as records from the federal archives show, trade in palm produce generated an income of £54m for the government of Eastern Region in 1954 alone. It was the export of this commodity alongside other cash crops like rubber and cashew nuts that funded most of that era’s capital expenditure; from inter-city roads network to the cement factory at Nkalagu (now in Ebonyi State), the cattle ranch at Obudu (Cross River State), the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and several other industrial projects some of which still exists. If the £54m the Eastern Region earned from the sale of palm produce is adjusted with the intervening decades’ inflationary trend taken into consideration, the equivalent value today will run into over one hundred billion naira.
It was such huge economic fortune derived from agriculture that Governor Ugwuanyi had in mind when he noted, in his inaugural speech, that the declining revenue from the federation account “is another great opportunity for Enugu State and Nigeria to look inwards and harness those potential, which free oil money has blinded us from exploiting”. The statement drew a resounding applause. But it was not the typical platitude-laced rhetoric of politics. Words were soon matched with action. However, given that investments in agriculture do not yield the kind of instantaneous turnaround that may be seen in concrete projects like roads rehabilitation, the outcome was not immediately obvious.
Besides the gradual scaling up of production at the oil palm plantations that has seen a 700 percent growth in income paid by the management to the Enugu State government’s coffers, a major tangible benefit of improved funding for agriculture was evident during the Covid-19 lockdown. The varying degrees of movement restrictions had resulted in decreased income, with many households requiring some support from governments. Among the items in the palliatives shared by governments and sundry organizations, rice was understandably the most recurring in the list.
The trend was no different in Enugu State. The difference, however, was that all the rice shared out by the government bearing the Enugu Rice imprint were cultivated in the state. Enugu had always been noted for rice cultivation with communities such as Ugbawka and Adani, in Nkanu East and Uzo Uwani local government areas respectively, attaining fame that drew thousands from distant locations to their weekly markets. Building on this comparative advantage, the Ugwuanyi administration has committed substantial resources to expand production capacity through various incentives such as subsidized fertilizers and leasing of tractors, and by installing rice mills and de-stoning machines in rice-growing communities.
In addition, six Pivot Irrigation systems have been constructed in some communities to enable rice farmers to cultivate the crop twice or thrice in a year. The government has also launched the Agricultural Feeder Roads projects totaling 46.89 kilometres in 12 communities across the three senatorial zones where rice is grown.
These inputs have grown output significantly and earned Enugu State a Staple Crops Processing Zone status, a project conceived by the African Development Bank in collaboration with the federal government to support states with huge potential in staple crops’ production. The benefits reflect also in the fact that Enugu Rice has steadily become a preferred brand in the market. The social and economic impacts have been felt both at the micro and macro level: the state’s economy benefits; the farmers’ earnings and living condition improve; increased production means critical food items are readily available, resulting in affordability; and, ultimately, job opportunities are created across the agricultural value chain.
So in the face of dwindling federal allocation, Governor Ugwuanyi’s intervention in agriculture represents a steady march towards a robust financial path unencumbered by the uncertainties of petroleum price. A pointer to that is the recent NBS data which shows Enugu was one of only 11 states that recorded growth in IGR generated in the first half of 2020. This growth (14.6%) was despite the economic slowdown caused by Covid-19. The significance shows further in the fact the state ranks among the top 10 on BudgIT’s States’ Fiscal Sustainability Index. For years, governments at the federal and state level have voiced a desire to exploit the country’s potential in agriculture to give the economy a diversified base. The problem is that such pledges rarely went beyond lip service. But, happily, Enugu is showing sufficient will in that regar.
TheSun