Ordinarily, when you enter the farm, the bad roads, ramshackle sheds and drainage system puts you off. But inside the farm, the biggest of such in West Africa, thousands of farmers, artisans of all kinds and veterinary doctors, make their daily living.
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A trip to Oke Aro Pig Farm will convince you that truly real money comes from the bush… (Igbe lowo wa). With a population of about 3000 pens each housing at least 100 pigs of various sizes-fattening and breeders, inclusive, the farm is a a neglected gold mine, which if well nurtured by any government, could expand its scope and provide more employment to the teeming youths roaming the streets in search of non-existence white-collar jobs.
With no electricity, good drainage system and water, which remains the most crucial of needs of the farmers who have formed themselves into cooperative societies, is today a government to itself as boreholes, generators and block making industries, dots the undulating landscape where the farm established by the Federal Government through the National Directorate of Employment (NDE), in conjunction with Lagos State Ministry of Agriculture, which leased the land from Ogun State where the farm is located. Ironically, the farm is located within 500 metres to the boundary of Adiyan Water Works and Iju Water Works, but it is a case of water, water, everywhere but there is no water to drink. Newdawnngr team consisting of Executive Editor,Tunde Abatan, News Editor, Charles Okogene and Marketing consultant, Emeka Opara, had an encounter with the executives of Anuoluwapo cooperative, led by Mrs, Ijenede Adaeze and Tunde Olatokun, the President and Secretary of the body respectively, on sundry issues affecting the farm.
Excerpts:
So would you say there is presence of government here?
I wouldn’t say there is no government, because first of all, they are the one that gave us the land and we are praising government for that, but after that, we are on our own; every structure that you see here is built by an individual farmer. Every animal that you see here is the ability of individual farmer and even the infrastructure is individual farmer that contributed money. Right now, we are on drainage project that you can see… It is individual farmer that contributed money in doing that, so that is that.
And you still pay whatever, either tax to the government?
Actually, individuals pay personal tax and government collect VAT, I don’t want to go into that because that money is big…It is not a big money, N7,500 per person, per annum, so it is not too big ,so, that is why I said for giving us land, they are grateful but every other thing is being done by the farmer, is not as if government is… you know they are the owner of the land, for giving us that, we appreciate it but we still need more from them. in fact we need more , this place is not electrified, there is no electricity here, the road too we are trying to do it on our own.
No water?
Every individual has its borehole, we just pray that the borehole problem should not happen, because if it happens, the effect won’t be good… because everybody has dug a hole here.
What is the scope of the market for pigs produced here?
Actually there are markets for our product; there are markets for it, though we still need to improve more to get more of Lagosians to start eating pork. Pork meat is the best meat, it is even better than beef, because the cholesterol in beef is higher than that of pork and pork is white meat while beef is red meat.
I don’t want to spoil anybody’s market but I know pork is better and the most consumed meat throughout the world. In Germany that is what they eat, that is why we are fighting very hard for Lagosians to be eating better meat instead of concentrating on other animals. We are looking at how to expand the scope of the market within Lagos for Lagosians to eat better meat and for now people that are appreciating us are people from the Niger Delta, Eastern part of Nigeria and Benin Republic.
Don’t you think that your inability to expand the market in Lagos and South West is because of religious belief, religious belief in the sense that most people here are Muslims compared to the area you just mentioned?
I am a Muslim and I eat it a lot, so we are trying to erase that religious issue, even some Christians still believe it is not good, actually religious belief affect our market, I will not deny that, but we are trying to erase that from peoples mind;in fact, I love it more than beef.There is nothing like cholesterol in pig, pig can only cool body temperature by wallowing in water, I will like to say pig would prefer to wallow in water but if there is no water, if there is much mud around, pig will prefer that mud instead of the pig to die, it would rather wallow in that mud. If you have mud, if you have dirty water, if you have clean water and you ask pig to drink, pig will drink clean water.
Why do people believe that pig is a dirty animal?
Pig is not a dirty animal, the reason why some people tag pig as a dirty animal is that pig doesn’t have sweat gland like other animal to cool its body temperature, they can only cool their body by wallowing in the water, but if there is no clean water around, pig will prefer mud around its environment. Even the pigs that we allow to roam about like the way they keep pig in the olden days, they will look for cool area to cool their body temperature, that is the essence of pig entering the mud, if you have clean water and you have dirty water, if you ask pig to drink water, it will ask for clean water. In fact, some people have nipple drinker in their farm, that nipple drinker…
What is nipple drinker?
Nipple drinker is an automatic drinker that you provide for your animal so the source of that water is from the over head tank connected to the pump, so, they will prefer to drink that one than taking from the dirty water that is there. That water that you see that is dirty, they wallow in it just to cool their body and if you look at pig house very well, you will see it has dining table where they eat their food, they have toilet where they excrete and they have where they relax. No matter how small the room is, they will create where they will be eating, where they will relax and where they excrete. So that shows that it is not a dirty animal and some people believe that pigs carry worms that anybody that eat pigs will be infected with worms, it is a very big lie; here, we take care of our pigs by de-worming them, even before the mother gives birth to the young ones, like a week or two weeks to that time, we de-worm the mother, after de-worming, eight weeks that you have the piglet, we de-worm them, every three month de-worm them until we sell the animal, in so doing, there are no single worm in them. Unlike other animals they bring from Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso that are just walking around, by the time they brought this cow when you get to abattoir, you will see them, many of them would have died, they will be lean, you can count their ribs. We are take good care of our pigs, we can guarantee you that what you are eating from here is a very good meat, clean meat, satisfying meat, even before we slaughter them, Lagos State Government officials sanctify them.
you can even see someone there, he is a ministry official from the ministry of Agriculture Lagos State, they inspect it.
Before you say that, I normally see big trucks that are loaded with them, does it mean you sanctify them before you sell them or what?
Yes, even if you stop those vehicles and you request for their paper, you will see it with them, every pig sold here, they will show you. So every pig sold here is very safe.
You are a very good marketer, you have marketed your product, but, how do you reconcile this saying or this proverb that says ‘bath a pig, dress a pig yet, it will return to muddy water’?
It is not as if pig likes mud, you get it? You bath the pig, it will not go to the mud water, if you provide clean water for the pig, the difference is that, gone are those days when our fore fathers were training pigs, there is nothing like building a house for them, caging them in one place, bathing them and cleaning them, they just left them, without giving them balanced diet, so they left the pig to roam around, whenever they got grass or anything they eat, and throughout that period there is no water anywhere, they walk around, so what we are trying to say is what motivate those pig is that there is no availability of water and they need to cool their body temperature, so it is because there is no water and it is mud that is available at that particular time, that is why they enter there not to die.
What is your strategy to market your product here?
Initially, when those buyers were coming from Delta, Warri… that was where we really focused our attention being that just selling in whole sale but when we now come back and said instead of taking this thing out like that, let us show case our product. Hence, on the 28th of last month, we did pig fiesta during which we showcased our pigs at Police College, Ikeja.There was live, full roasted pork there and we invited ministry officials, radio stations, newspapers houses .so we tried and we are trying to let Lagos know that pork is very rich in all vitamins. We have started and by the grace of God, we will do more than that.
Apart from that, what have you done to attract the private sector; what have you done to cooperate with the private sector like BOI, First Bank, Bank of Agriculture?
Actually, Bank of Agriculture, they don’t have the capacity of the kind of facility we need. We have approached them, the maximum they can give, I have collect form from them before, the maximum they can give is N250,000 , if I want to collect more than that, they will ask me to go and bring heaven and earth, which is not available, literally they are giving N250,000 and that N250,000 is for six months, how will you want a farmer to use N250000 for six months. You know if they are giving N250000 for like a year or yearand a half is a very good loan. It is a very good loan for a longer period but for a short period, before you know, if care is not taken you might not make anything out of that money. On Bank of Industry, they say they are not giving to production, you know we are producing, they are giving to processing.
But they gave some State Governments to plant rice?
That is Anchor Borrowers by the CBN, which we have approached through Union Bank. At the end of the day, they said our off -taker is not organised.
That is your cooperative?
No, the off- taker are the people that will take our products…like now if they give us money, we use the money to produce, somebody will take off our product, Union Bank came in to see our off- takers, at the end of the day, they said they cannot package them because they are not organised . That would have worked for us that is where we have the issue.
You have a slaughter slab here and is it where you slaughter some of the animals, so why will anybody say you are not processing, is it not part of process?
It is not individual farmers that is slaughtering and it is not the union that is slaughtering, so we have other guys, those are just our butchers, their main job is to buy from us, butcher them and sell to people.
You said there is no sign of government presence, but you pay tax?
I did not saying there is no presence of government. Are they not the one that gave us this land?
What efforts are you making towards making sure that government comes and fix the roads so you can make more money and pay more tax?
To be honest with ourselves, every now and then, Lagos State Government wants to development where it is making more money from, so they believe nothing is coming from this place. What is coming indirectly to them are numerous, this place employs directly like 4000 farmers, indirect labour like bricklayers we have them here in hundreds, we have carpenters in hundreds too, we have generator repairers in hundreds, we have casual labors in thousands, so the people that are here that this place engage or benefit from here are more than 10,000, and individual farmers are paying their personal taxes.
How do you get to levy yourselves and pay when the market is not as it is expected?
You see, this is were we are living, if that road is not motorable, we will not be able to sell at all, so out of nothing, we just…like when we levy ourselves for this project we are doing now, we said each person to pay N6000 per pen and we give ourselves like a month to pay, we have spent more than a month, we don’t want to kill ourselves.
