The Rice Pyramids: Matters Arising 

BY DANIEL BOTT

Like most people, I also think that the idea of building a rice pyramid makes zero sense. Its primary goal is to bring people together to sing-to-life the praises of a presidency that has died in the hearts of Nigerians. As usual, his supporters have been gushing about this “wonderful achievement.” The part I don’t understand is why the president needs this additional validation from the same crowd that would cheer him on regardless of his actions.

In my opinion, there is nothing to cheer. Let’s start with the tag that “Nigeria has the biggest rice pyramid in the world.” Sadly, we have this worthless title because no country in the world sees the value of building rice pyramids. Should rice be stacked in pyramids or should we make it available and affordable in the local market? We simply copied the groundnut pyramids of Kano without thinking about why or how they came about.

Small history: The groundnut pyramids were built in the 50s and 60s by Dantata, who was selling groundnuts to the Royal Niger Company (RNC) who in turn was exporting them to Britain since Nigeria didn’t have any oil mills at the time. So, the pyramids were built just to stack and store temporarily while waiting for the RNC to evacuate them. The idea of stacking them in pyramids was because it was believed that stacking them that way prevented the product from insect damage, and a pyramidal structure provided a more sturdy stacking arrangement. Then in the 1970s, the groundnut rosette virus disease attacked most of the farms in northern Nigeria and much of Africa, really. Yield crawled to zero and the groundnut pyramids disappeared. That was the end of the pyramids. Until the Buhari administration excavated the idea from history’s archeological dumpsite.

This little history helps us understand why we had groundnut pyramids in the first place. It also helps us to ask the important question: “why then do we have a rice pyramids of all things, and why in Abuja, of all places?” And this takes you to the first paragraph: it’s an agric show that seeks to deodorize the demystified Buhari legend that is already smelling like a skunk, and also create a fake seat for him in history as the one who brought back rice abundance. In reality, while the groundnut pyramids symbolized abundance, the rice pyramids are a symbol of copycat-ism, superficial-ness and false populism.

Now some calculation: I hear we had 1 million bags of paddy out there. Paddy is rice that is harvested, but hasn’t been de-husked. Since yield after de-husking is about 60%, then we will have about 600,000 bags of 100kg whole grain rice, which translates to 1.2 million bags of 50kg rice, the bag sizes you see in the market that is now sold for 30k). Now Nigeria is said to have a per capita consumption of 32kg. This means that every Nigerian eats about 32kg of rice in one year. That’s an average. This also means that the whole pyramid that they have been yapping about will be consumed in 27 days by the 25 million residents of Lagos! All 200 million of us will finish it in 3.5 days!

This just shows that the rice pyramids are not a sign of abundance as they would have you believe. It is a sign of unseriousness.

Nigeria produces only 5 million metric tonnes of rice now (it used to be 3.7million, kudos to Buhari’s effort) but we consume about 7 million metric tonnes. So, there is a deficit of 2 million metric tonnes. So, even if we refuse to eat the rice we produce, and we want to line it up in all the stadiums in Nigeria for this kind of agric show, it will not change the fact that we are still not producing enough. And the insecurity is worsening a bad situation, as farmers are either unable to harvest, or they have to pay terrorists to allow them harvest, or they don’t farm at all.

The other part of the conversation that they refused to talk about this afternoon is the part that the rice farmers ran away with Mr. Emiefele’s money. The farmers are owing Goddy close to N500 billion from the Anchor Borrower Scheme, a poorly thought out project that has ground to a halt because the farmers have refused to pay. And the government didn’t want to dull its shine at the programme today, by asking RIFAN to pay what they owe. Clearly, today is a happy day and Oga has to shine like a million stars. Debt recovery is not important, at least not today. If I were in Goddy’s shoes, I will seize the rice that the farmers brought for this exhibition, until they pay me my money. But I am not in his shoes.

And I am not joining the choir that has been dancing and shaking butt for Mr. Buhari on this rice pyramid charade.

Rice that only 200 million people can finish in three and a half days. Is that one rice?

…Daniel Bott is based in Abuja