US Panel Of Experts Slams USA Trade Agreement With Buhari On Agriculture And FG’s RUGA Policy
A panel of experts in the United States of America (USA) has denounced the agreement signed by Nigeria and the USA during President Buhari’s meeting with Trump last year as “death” to Nigeria’s domestic agricultural economy.
While comparing the Obama administration and Trump administration’s policies on Nigeria, Barrister Emmanuel Ogebe opined that, “The former US administration claimed that the violence in Nigeria was not religious but a result of the marginalization of the north by the south.
He pointedly said the assertion is a false argument, saying that for almost 70 per cent of Nigerian history, northerners have ruled Nigeria and therefore asked; “So how can people who have ruled for 70% be marginalized?”
Ogebe also pointed out that under the current administration, there is a troubling policy, adding that when president Buhari met with president Trump last year, President Trump got him to sign a deal to buy agricultural produce from the U.S. which means that while the farmers in Nigeria are losing their farms to the Fulanis, they also losing their markets to U.S. crops.
He further said; “So, that wasn’t a very well thought-out policy. Now if president Buhari cared about Christian farmers, he would have said ‘no we can’t buy food from you when we can grow it ourselves’. So that is a policy for the U.S. that needs to be reversed.
“We need to strengthen the farmers, not wipe them out. And that will be highly unfortunate if that happens.”
Agreeing with Ogebe, Mr. Murray, a veteran of Washington DC affairs said; “For those of you who don’t think that the agreement that president Buhari signed, the agricultural agreement, is an issue, you have to understand the American agricultural machine.
“Haiti used to be a food exporter, ok. And we took care of that. Nobody in the world can compete with American agriculture. We went into an area where… (we won’t go into it, but we got a small farm that we sponsor there) and there were 30 people, 40 people out working two and a half acres of land by hand. In the United States, one farmer handles thousands of acres by himself without any employee, using equipment and machinery and drones and so forth and so on. So this agreement basically is death to a huge agricultural sector in Nigeria.”
Also responding to the proposed Ruga policy of the Nigerian government, Human Rights Lawyer Emmanuel Ogebe said; “I visited Cameroon, and at the time I visited five years ago, there were 2,000 Nigerian refugees in Cameroon. That number has grown to 50,000. These are Christians who were displaced from Northern Nigeria by terrorists. In 2014 when I went, we pleaded with some of them to come back to Nigeria and try and reintegrate. Some of them came back and they are outside the capital city, and for the past 5 years we have been trying to get them lands to farm on and live on.
“And when a friend of mine who is involved in the project with me spoke to the vice president of Nigeria asking for land. The Vice president said, ‘no, you go and talk to the churches’. Now, against that backdrop, we have a situation where that same government is taking lands from the states to create Fulani settlements for cow and their own citizens are still refugees outside.
“So the impunity of the killers and complicity of the government does not allow room for reconciliation. That’s the real problem here right now. And until that is addressed, I don’t know how we can resolve that easily. “
The interactive session also addressed several other issues.
