Mai Mala Buni, Yobe State governor
Governor Mai Mala Buni of Yobe state is clearly a silent visionary. A leader who would rather quietly screw the greasy bolts and nuts to get the job done than mount the soapbox to announce how he intends to do the job.
My visit to Damaturu last week after many years was an adventure worth the time and the money.
Yobe is advancing on many fronts into becoming a major frontier market in Nigeria, nay Africa. Though blessed with many solid minerals, Yobe has its strength in agriculture. And it will amaze any visitor the diversity of farm produce possible from the state.
Obviously, Governor Buni has long realised this and he’s equipping farmers in the state to scale up their productivity. The governor has aligned his vision with that of President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope which has three key components namely: growing the economy, lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty and Creating an enabling environment for businesses. All of these can be broken down into job creation, food security, economic growth, access to capital, poverty eradication, anti-corruption efforts and inclusive development. This is exactly what Buni is doing in Yobe through empowerment of the women folk, upskilling the youths, enhancing productive capacities of farmers, providing hybrid seeds for greater yield, and making funds accessible to the farmers.
Yobe has the largest pastoral market in West Africa and can feed Nigeria and still have enough meat for export. Aside the meat, the hides and skin component of the pastoral industry has the capacity to turn Yobe to an export state with huge returns of forex. Buni has already worked out this possibility. By completing the Muhammadu Buhari International Cargo Airport conceived and started by his predecessor, Ibrahim Gaidam administration in 2017, Buni has shown foresight to turn Yobe to a commercial hub and a ready source of both raw materials and agro-processed products.
The airport was initially proposed to cost N11 billion, but the cost increased to about N18 billion due to variations. The completion of the cargo airport commissioned by President Muhammadu Buhari in 2023 at the twilight of his government has renewed the hope of Yobe farmers and entrepreneurs of an assured future when their produce and products will easily find their way into the global market.
Yobe’s pastoral farming sector alone can drive the economy of the state if it is well structured and strategically linked to the global market. In 2023, Nigeria’s exports of raw hides and skin (other than fur skins) and leather was US$85.34 million, according to the United Nations COMTRADE database on international trade. This value, experts say, would double if there had been a direct link between the farmers and the international market. Lack of direct access to the markets has resulted in endless wait by the farmers and waste of products usually due to poor preservation of such products. A cargo airport like the Yobe airport will break this cycle of waste and wait.
Nationwide, Buni is among the top tier governors making sense and giving meaning to President Tinubu’s Renewed Hope agenda through agriculture. Yobe is blessed with vast arable land suitable for cultivating sesame, gum Arabic, rice, guinea corn and other crops for local consumption and for export. Just like Yobe, many other states, especially in the north, are endowed with resource-rich, arable land. The challenge has been how to make agriculture both attractive and lucrative such that the youths can embrace farming knowing full well that it will not only help put food on the table, but will be a veritable source of income for them and their families. Buni has unlocked the storehouse of funds targeted mainly at agriculture and its extensive value chain.
This year alone, the state government has invested over N15 billion to procure inputs and equipment under the Agricultural Revitalization programme. The equipment includes tractors and smaller machines for ploughing, tilling, threshing, planting, among others. The equipment and inputs have been distributed free of charge to 5,300 farmers across the 17 local government areas of the state. The state has also completed the training of 178 extension workers in collaboration with the Agro-Climatic Resilience in Semi-Arid Landscapes (ACReSAL) project. The capacity building for the extension workers is paying off as it has equipped them to effectively disseminate information on new agricultural innovations to peasants and low scale traditional farmers in a manner they will understand.
Governor Buni’s needs assessment of his state places him ahead of his peers. He understands the verdant opportunities available in the agro-value chain. He is equipping the farmers for greater-yield seeds and with potential direct flights to key markets within and outside the country. Yobe in the coming years will morph to a major source of food to meet Nigeria’s food security needs, boost Tinubu’s renewed hope of making Nigeria less dependent on oil and gas money and become a reliable source of forex.
Buni’s renewed focus on agriculture is not lost on the farmers. On countless occasions, Yobe farmers under the auspices of All-Farmers’ Association of Nigeria (AFAN), have applauded the governor for his unrelenting support to farmers in the state.
The chairman of AFAN in Yobe, Alhaji Usman Ngari, bears the bouquet of gratitude of the farmers to the governor for “the provision of critical infrastructure and launch of the massive multi-billion naira agricultural empowerment programme,” coupled with other interventions including procuring and distributing fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides to farmers across the states at subsidised prices.
On account of the pastoral success story from Yobe these past years, many have hailed Tinubu for creating the new Ministry of Livestock Development. Experts say the new focus on livestock development will not only assuage the burden of meat supply in the country but create another stream of forex for the federal government from the $137.71 billion hides and skin global market in 2024, anticipated to hit $174.69 billion in 2028 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.1 per cent. This is a huge market made possible by growing offtake of hides and skin to sustain the rise in the fashion and apparel industry, footwear manufacturing, automotive upholstery, furniture production and changing consumer preferences. Leather is taking up huge space in the fashion industry. Nigeria, and indeed Yobe, has positioned strategically to feed from this huge global market. This is the sense in which Tinubu’s Renewed Hope for food security has found a fitting convergence in Buni’s Yobe agro-business initiatives. It’s a smart way to achieving sustainable economic diversification.
Odugbesan, agric-extension expert, writes from Abuja
