NIGERIA-INDIA'S MoU FOR SUGAR INSTITUTE
NIGERIA-INDIA'S MoU FOR SUGAR INSTITUTE
By:
Nurudeen Dauda
January 30, 2020
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To begin with, in my view, part of the security challenges our country faces today has to do with the problem of unemployment among many other causes . For the government of the day to get it right, it must pay more than a lip-service to the issue of insecurity . Our strategy of tackling insecurity needed much to be desired. Our strategy needed to be changed. Job creation through the private sector will go along way in curbing insecurity, but without security there will never be investments. The government must put in more effort towards fighting insecurity in order to attract private sector investments. Without private sector investments unemployment which reforces insecurity will only persist in the country .
However, the National Sugar Development Council (NSDC), has on the 29th of this January, 2020 signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the National Sugar Institute (NSI), Kanpur, India for the establishment of a Sugar Institute in Ilorin, Kwara State.
The aims of the MoU is to train adequate manpower in the country for the development of sugar factories. We do hope that the signing of this MoU will not go the way of many other MoUs previously signed on several other areas of our national life without results. It is sad to note that, despite our huge sugarcane potential, we virtually import all our domestic and industrial sugar need of the country .
In addition, we equally do not have enough manpower capacity that will oversee the actualization of our sugar masterplan development strategy. As a country, for us to get it right, we must develop sugarcane farming through the adoption of agric mechanization . We often pay "lip-service" to "diversification of the "economy". The federal government must put in more effort towards economic diverfication. We must pay more than a "lip- service "towards Sugar Self- Sufficiency in the country.
As a good step in the right direction, the government must deploy its "Fiscal Policy "towards the promotion of economic diversification . The CBN on the other hand, must key in with its monetary policy measures . Northern states Governors where most of the Sugarcane potentials are should equally give a collaborative support to the attainment of Sugar Self- Sufficiency. With Sugarcane economy we could sustain the economy.
Nigeria has a land potential of over 500,000 hectares of suitable cane fields capable of producing over 5 million metric tons of sugar. In Nigeria you can grow sugarcane in commercial quantity in the following states: Adamawa, Kwara Kaduna, Jigawa, Niger, Taraba, Nasarawa, Kebbi, and Kogi etc. The Nigerian Sugar market has an estimated potential of 1.7 million metric tons, according to the United States Development of Agriculture ( USDA). Much of the Sugar consume in Nigeria is imported from Brazil despite our huge potential.
The Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Governor Mr. Godwin Emefiele, had ones said that: "Nigeria spends $100 million on importation of white sugar annually." ( Vanguard, May 5, 2017). In my observation , Nigeria has no business importing Sugar, but only if our potential is properly harnessed. With our population alone is a huge market of which if our Suger potential is fully harnessed it will provide a lot of jobs and revenue to the government.
Sugarcane Industry is one of Brazil’s most important economic sectors in terms of job creations, with more than 1.1 million people employed nationwide. Sugarcane ethanol and bioelectricity produced from leftover fibers, stalks and leaves make sugarcane the largest source of renewable energy in Brazil.
Sugarcane provides almost 17% of the country’s total energy supply, second only to oil and ahead of hydroelectricity. More than forty percent of the country’s gasoline needs have been replaced by sugarcane ethanol – making gasoline the alternative fuel in Brazil.
Sugarcrops offers production alternatives to food, such as livestock feed, fibre and energy, particularly biofuels (sugar-based ethanol) and/or co-generation of electricity (cane bagasse). Sugarcane is generally regarded as one of the most significant and efficient sources of biomass for biofuel production. Stronger linkages between world sugar and oil prices have emerged, driven in part by the relationships between sugar as the primary ethanol feedstock in Brazil, the world’ dominant producer of sugarcane-based ethanol in the world.
We absolutely have no excuse not to be a Sugar Net Exporter. We have no business in being a Sugar Net Importer in view of our Sugercane potential. Let's pick up the challenge! fluctuation in crude oil prices at the International market should be our moral booster for the diversification of our economy.
May God bless Nigeria!