Despite criticisms, Shonga Farms Holdings Limited (SFHL), located in Shonga, Edu Local Government Area of Kwara State, is alive and well, the firm’s General Manager, Adebayo Sangobiyi has said.
Many Kwara residents, especially those in the opposition, had condemned the establishment of the over 10-year-old enterprise, describing it as a doomed white elephant. Others said state officials used it to siphon cash. Yet some claimed its produce was not available in the state’s markets.
Sangobiyi waved all that away, saying the entity is strictly a commercial concern whose “concept was for us to understudy the white farmers and by the time they are big enough, should buy us out. That is why we have the Shonga Phase 2 called Alapa project. Our intention is to start the Alapa Project with the indigenes.
“I think Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed has started it by selecting 10 youth farmers from each of the 16 local government areas of the state. The concept is to transform them to commercial farmers and they are doing wonderfully well.”
Mr. Sangobiyi added that Shonga farms business has been a success story, saying that his poultry farmers started from one pen each.
“When the banks came in they did one more each for them and already today they are erecting pens on a daily basis. At the close of this year each of the four of them will be having 10 pens. If there is no market they will not be talking of expansion. We have depots in Abuja, Lagos and we deal directly with all the eateries.
“Now what we are concentrating on is how to benefit the immediate communities. We have brought a concept called out-growers to showcase these communities to others. Our intention is to extend state wide in terms of what we do as give back to the communities. We are in business in Shonga Farms Holdings Ltd. We are competing with other companies, so our concentration is how grow.”
He therefore urged President Muhammadu Buhari to face agriculture squarely as it will lead to industrialisation with a concomitant transformation of the country’s economy.
Sangobiyi said “wven at the national level the GDP will improve and we will do less of importation. In Shonga we were the first to do major cassava chips export during Dr Akinwumi Adesina. We did about four or five shipments during that time.
“We were mopping up cassava from the entire state to do our chips. More money was coming to the farmers. If we have a similar Shonga Farms Holdings Limited in all the zones, I tell you Nigeria will be a major challenge to America and Britain and our Naira will appreciate.”
On the strident criticisms of SFHL by some members of the opposition, the chief executive officer (CEO) described such as “most unfortunate.”
Said he: “We have heard that over and over again, so we are used to that tune. We are dealing with banks. Shonga was initially known as Kwasinbo, then it was under the ministry. It was solely owned by the Kwara state government.
“But later as time went on the then Governor Bukola Saraki found out that if the entire Kwara state money was sent to Shonga, it would not take the farms to his desired dream. That brought about bringing in the banks. When the banks came in Shonga was moved out of the ministry. Banks will not tolerate all these bureaucracies; banks are in business, so when they invest money they want returns.
“All this attitude changed and now Shonga was registered as a limited liability company and that was when the entity Shonga Farms Holdings Limited came up. It started with five banks namely the legacy PHB, legacy Finn Bank, GTbank, Unity Bank and Intercontinental now Access Bank.
Each of the banks contributed N300 million debt and N200 million equity and that was the take off of the proper Shonga Farm Holdings Limited.
“Since Shonga Farm Holdings Limited started it has changed not only nomenclature, it has changed in administrative practice. So we are strictly in business. People expect all the continuation of the jamboree when we were we giving fresh milk to pupils, the government was doing that but the banks cannot afford to do that. At the inception the banks rolled out 15 per cent each totaling 75 percent and the state government added 25percent.
“But the tune changed as the banks were becoming handicapped kind of, they couldn’t afford to give money as at when due. As at that time Union Bank plc had the best agriculture desk, so we moved to that bank and negotiated with them and that was why the then group managing director, Funke Osinbodu came to the farm, saw everything herself and granted us some loans.
So you can’t be on loan and be doing jamboree. We are open to all, but the unfortunate thing is that the kind of concept we are running is new in Nigeria. We came up with off-taker approach. When we started, we set out to attain a certain level of production and we were able to achieve it. When we got to where we were going there was nobody to buy our products. We never thought of looking for somebody to buy the products before producing and we found out that people could not consume what we produced. That is when we were doing road shows all over the big cities in Kwara letting people know the products we had.
“The lesson that we have learnt led us to the off-taker approach system. ‘How does the off-taker approach work?’ ‘You will tell me what you want before I start producing.’ We started with cassava supplying the Nigerian Starch Mills Limited, which is the biggest in West Africa. It is located in Ihiala, Anambra state. We were supplying fresh milk WAMCO to produce our favoured peak and three crowns milks. We were supplying fresh to NUTRICIMA to produce coast milk in 10 percent local content.
“Equally our chickens, we had meetings with people that were supplying the big eateries and hotels to give us their consumption schedule per month. We signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU). And that is what the banks want. They want to be seeing how their money flows. That is what changed our approach to business and that is why people started saying that Shonga products are not available. That is not true. Go to Shoprite or any eatery in Ilorin. If you eat chicken in any eatery you have eaten Shonga chicken.
“At a point we were throwing away as much as 2000 litres of milk per day, if you throw away 2000 litres of water people will see the impact. We couldn’t continue that way if we really meant to succeed. We give our products to people with cold rooms and cold vans. I can see that the attitude of our people towards business, I don’t find it challenging enough. So our products are available.
“Likewise, for our milk, we lost interest in the production of yogurt. You can’t sell more than 1000 litres of yogurt in a day, whereas WAMCO wants me to give it 20,000 litres of fresh milk per day. It is a function of comparative analysis and if I want the banks to show interest in my business their money must be going back as at when due.”
He said that those claiming that the products are not in the markets in the state are only scoring cheap political capital of the whole issue.
“For four years I have a depot for yogurt in Ilorin, the state capital and I was throwing away yogurt every day. We don’t have the milk drinking culture. They are only making politics out of it. then I felt the best thing to do is to give the milk to WAMCO and we are all benefiting directly or indirectly. We still have depots all over, people are not patronizing us and the next song they will sing is that they are not seeing our products.
“Chicken chillies eatery was selling our rice for years, Alhaji Dan Musa Gold rice was processing our rice. How many of this were they buying? Dan Musa was taking his rice to Abuja and Lagos.
The reality is that most of our people want free things or cheap things. We cannot afford to do that, we are in business. If Kwara state government wants it can buy parts of the products and do politics with it, unfortunately it does not have the controlling shares.”
The general manager the company and hitherto hostile villagers are now best of friends, as the SFHL gives some of the villagers free technology and skills.
His words: “To the glory of God we see one another as family members. There is hardly anybody in the communities that does not know the names of my farmers. But it didn’t just come out of its own volition. It came courtesy of the committee on community relations. We give them technology free of charge. We have allowed some of them who are excellent in their farms to work in the farms of the white farmers.
“We are transferring skills and subsidise whatever they want to make their farm grow. We even create out-growers for them. If you plant and you cannot sell we buy from you and put it along with our own larger quantity and sell to the larger market.”
