The Rice Mill Company Nigeria Limited (otherwise called Abakaliki Rice Mill), located in Abakaliki, Ebonyi State capital, is no doubt a reference point in local rice production in Nigeria. Established in 1964, the 100 percent private sector-driven mill, according to data provided by the Abakaliki Rice Mill Owners’ Association, currently boasts of over 5,000 workers – comprising rice millers, rice blowers, rice blenders, rice de-stoners, dust/rice husk carriers, bag stitchers, barrow pushers, loaders, off-loaders, vehicle owners/drivers, mammy market traders, among others – 2,500 rice milling machines, and a sizeable production capacity per day. The mill serves many people from the hinterland areas of the state as well as people from other states who bring their rice to be milled or who come to buy rice. For instance, only recently, the Cross River State government reportedly bought N50 million worth of rice from the mill.

Regrettably, despite the strategic economic importance of the mill, no government has ever found it worthy to make investment there. The only government development effort at the mill over the years is the tarred road constructed by Sam Egwu, former governor of the state, who was compelled by former president Olusegun Obasanjo to do the roads. Obasanjo, on one of his visits to the mill during his tenure as president, was unimpressed by the state of the roads in the mill that he mandated the then state governor to immediately fix the roads.

But recently, purportedly in its bid to boost rice production in the state (and to make Abakaliki one of the cleanest cities in Nigeria), the Martin Elechi administration – likely in collaboration with some private sector interests – constructed three new rice mill clusters in the state – at Iboko in Izzi LGA, Onu Igboji in Ikwo LGA, and Osso Edda in Afikpo South LGA – and gave workers at the Abakaliki Rice Mill up to March 31, 2012 to relocate to either of the three new mills. However, following a protest march to the Government House earlier in the year by the rice millers and their host community and series of negotiations between the management of the rice mill and the state government, the deadline was shifted to May 31, 2012.

Ever since, the workers at the mill have been understandably living in apprehension, never ceasing in their appeal to the government to rescind its decision. But government has stubbornly stuck to its guns, with the grandstanding of Chike Onwe, the state commissioner for Information and State Orientation, that the decision to relocate the rice millers is both irrevocable and irreversible.

The move to boost rice production in the state, it must be stated, is not a bad idea. It is, in fact, in line with the Federal Government’s new agric initiative. Since he assumed office, President Goodluck Jonathan has not ceased to express his administration’s intention to boost agriculture, with great emphasis on rice production. In his Independence Day anniversary broadcast on October 1, 2011, he said, “Self-sufficiency in rice alone will save us the N356 billion that we currently spend annually importing rice.” Also, Akin Adesina, minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, revealed that 500,000 tons of rice is being imported into the country annually, saying, “Now our plan is, by 2013, to reduce that down to zero, which means the 500,000 metric tons of rice would be produced by Nigeria.”

So, the establishment of three new mills in Ebonyi is laudable. However, the faulty part of the whole process is the attempt at forceful relocation of workers at the old mill to the three new ones, which will amount to forceful closure of the already existing mill. There is no doubt that this move will reduce rather than boost rice production in the state. There are hassles involved in the relocation process. Considering that most of the workers at the mill have advanced in age, and considering that the three new mills are located far away from Abakaliki and its suburbs where most of the workers live at present, how many of these workers are likely to be willing to relocate to the new sites? And, if the majority of them refuse to relocate, and the government forcefully closes the old mill to enforce compliance, the government would have created an additional problem – unemployment – besides the apparent shortage of manpower at the new mills. How will that boost production?

Again, government claims that the new mills are mechanised. Good to hear. But, given that operations at the old mill are largely labour-intensive, and it is the same workers who are so used to manual operations that are expected to work with the modern machines, has the government considered how this is going to work? Is there any effort to provide training for the old staff to make them conversant with the new machines? Or is there any arrangement to bring in new operators to man the machines? And, in the event of this, what’s the arrangement for the old workers who would likely be redundant at the new mill?

Furthermore, if the government’s claim that one of its reasons for relocating the workers is that the mill causes environmental pollution is to be believed, then the way out is certainly not to relocate the workers. Why throw away the baby with the bath water (if you’ll permit me that cliché)? There are other ways around it, like legislation. But one is in doubt as to the authenticity of that claim. As an aggrieved worker at the mill said, “We do our monthly clean-up and still observe government’s environmental sanitation exercise. Many of the mill operators live up to 80 or 90 years, we are all strong. If the rice mill was a health hazard, it would not be so.”I reason with him.

No doubt, the dream of making Abakaliki the cleanest city in Nigeria is good, but do you have to create multiple problems in order to solve one? But unfortunately, this is one of the miscalculations of Nigerian governments. Between 2007 and 2011, for instance, Ikedi Ohakim, the then governor of Imo State, destroyed people’s means of livelihood in the pretext that he was making Imo clean through his fraud-infested “Clean and Green Initiative.” In those years, I often asked, “Of what use is it if Owerri is the cleanest city in Nigeria and residents of Owerri are hungry?” Of course, the arrow soon rebounded in the form of rising spate of kidnapping and armed robbery in the state, and Ohakim was caught pants down. This is a lesson for Elechi.

But I suspect that the main reason behind the forceful relocation is that government is afraid the workers may not want to relocate – in which case the new mills would amount to huge waste of public funds, apart from exposing government’s inability for proper planning. If my suspicion is right, then it is indeed a bad omen. It means that the rice millers were not carried along from the outset. If they had been carried along, if the government had consulted properly, perhaps the new mills would not have been necessary in the first place. Maybe the millers would have preferred that the funds be spent on modernising the already existing mill, and then this whole relocation brouhaha wouldn’t have come up at all.

But now that the new mills have been built, here’s what I think. It is possible to run the new mills side by side with the already existing one. There is nothing wrong in having four instead of three rice mills. More likely, the more the mills, the more the rice produced. If the new mills are running at full capacity, and the old mill maintains its present production capacity, we would no doubt have more rice.

So, the government should drop the idea of forceful relocation. Rather, it should use persuasion. Workers who are willing to move should be assisted to move their heavy duty machines to the new sites, and those who are not willing should be left alone. The government should in fact make the new mills more attractive to the millers through provision of amenities. For instance, the old mill has a thriving market, restaurants, warehouses, administrative offices, an automobile servicing centre, a petrol station – Rice Mill Oil – run by the Rice Mill Owners’ Association, among other amenities. The government should provide much more than these at the new mills.

But if the Elechi government insists on forceful relocation – in the manner of a dictator – then I wish him luck. My only fear is that he may be up against a revolt. You do not disrupt people’s legitimate means of survival and expect a friendly pat on your back.


http://www.businessdayonline.com/NG/index.php/analysis/commentary/37350-between-elechi-and-abakaliki-rice-millers

People dont learn from history, Elechi should have asked his SSG (Chief F.O.U Mbam) the reaction he got from rice mill owners led by Chris Nshii (now senator) when he wanted to control the rice mill in 1987/88. Then Chief Mbam was the local governemnt chairman of Abakaliki LGA. The local government built thier own rice mill inside the complex, when the mill owners stopped work, the local government thought they could force the farmers to mill in their own machines but was disappointed when the farmers did not.This was because, these farmers get loans from the mill owners to plant their rice, they will in turn bring these rice after harvest to the millers who will collect their capital after the sell of the harvest and make some money from processing the rice for the farmer. It will be very difficult to relocate Abakaliki rice mill to anywhere in the world.