Constraints to Increasing Agricultural Productivity in Nigeria: A Review

Table 31. Installed grains storage capacities of completed metal silos under the SGRP
Location State Capacity ‘000 mt
Lafiagi Kwara 11 000
Minna Niger 25 000
Gombe Gombe 25 000
Akure Ondo 25 000
Ogoja Cross rivers 25 000
Irrua Edo 25 000
Makurdi Benue 25 000
Jahun Jigawa 25 000
Total installed capacity 186 000
Source: Nigerian Agricultural Magazine (1999), cited in Babalola
(2003)
Lack of funding has slowed completion of the other silos and limited the full utilization of
completed ones. For example, the eight completed ones held only 3.72 thousand mt of assorted
grains in 1999. These storage levels cannot meet a food disaster or encourage more
production. Also, farmers have no direct access to government silos.
Rice
Rice is an important food commodity across the West African subregion, including Nigeria. The
subregional per capita rice consumption is about 40 kg per annum, while Nigeria’s consumption
level grew from less than 15 kg in the 1980s to nearly 30 kg in the 2000s. Thus, Nigeria still lags
in per capita rice consumption behind the West African average, likely arising from a
combination of low domestic production, limits on imports, and low purchasing power of rice
consumers (Daramola 2005)
Rice is produced in Nigeria within upland, hydromorphic, and rainfed lowland ecologies, all of
which account for at least 70 percent of the total area under rice. In the irrigated systems, rice is
the dominant crop, especially in the northern parts of Nigeria. However, in the rainfed production
systems, rice is only a part of often complex cropping arrangements, and this complexity tends
to vary between ecologies (Ogungbile and Phillip 1996). Figure 4 shows the major riceproducing
areas in Nigeria.
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