Grabbing The Spaces - Bamidele Ademola-Olateju

While the governors in the Southwest, South, and Southeast are busy consolidating their business interests, plotting their return or trying hard to appoint a successor, the governors in the north are either in Abuja cornering Agric funds for their states, encouraging farmers cooperatives to present a unified front. When they are not doing any of these, they are not standing in the way of their people.

While the northern northern business men are acting as offtakers, forming alliances with global corporate leaders like Syngenta and looking for ways for the north to become the undisputed national leader in food security provisions, our Southwest business people are going to Abuja individually, looking to grab that big funding without the land and the global alliances that can convince anyone to part with billions in funding.
While the Delta Avengers are busy bombing pipelines, making fishing, shrimping and all kinds of business in aquaculture difficult due to spillage, up North they are looking to culture the prized fish Gymnarchus niloticus - eja osan in Yoruba, Dansarki in Hausa in large numbers. Determined to be the biggest supplier of protein to the academic south.

When these efforts begin to yield, the North would have extended their lead in Agriculture and the rest of Nigeria will be totally dependent on them for protein, grains and vegetables leaving the south with tubers alone. As I write, they are grabbing the spaces and the oppotunities. They are organizing. They may not have the strategic processes but they will learn.

Dipo Famakinwa of the DAWN Commission is the only person in the whole of Southwestern Nigeria doing anything of note. He goes to Abuja to make presentations and argue for inclusion and funding for initiatives that they are developing in-house as a regional body. The governors are docile and are the luckiest human beings I have seen all my life! Everyone is fixated on Buhari while ignoring their governors who are most inept. The federal government is determined to diversify from oil and they are working hard at it. I do not work for them and I am not in government but I must alert you to what is happening. All the banks have agric desks and their officers are either in Kebbi, Zamfara or somewhere in the north or in CBN looking to fund Alhaji Maikasuwa wheat project or Mallam Inuwa to the tune of N7billion! And they are getting it!

Please don't come here telling me it is because their man is there. No! They are organized and they have home support. I am a farmer. I have been looking for funding, no dice. PpNo support. I have funded everything I have done from my family savings. I have co-lateral but who cares? The banks will look to tag you with criminal and illegal charges on CBN loans if they ever care or think your pathetic N50million is not worth their while, when big fishes with collateral in Maitama are looking for billions and with their governors backing them. I have 200 acres in the derived Savannah where I can grow alfalfa to feed 3,000 cows. I can't get help. Keep bombing, keep posturing and speaking your yeye oyinbo and call them Aboki. Without them hunger will kill you or South Africa will enslave you. The North is leading the new economy. Keep dulling!

By:

Bamidele Ademola-Olateju