• First, the exclusion aims is to encourage dairy producers to invest in local ranches. The problem though is that Nigeria’s cattle are among the least prolific in the world. This explains the embrace of imported milk, The country failed to modernize its archaic system of grazing cattle herds over vast distances. Much of the animals’ intake are expended on excruciating commutes.
• Second, Nigeria’s high energy costs will undermine fresh milk preservation which this policy shift requires. For decades, dry (powder) milk has been the default choice for Nigerians. They are more affordable and durable given the epileptic power supply. The generations-long dependence on dry milk intensified from the late 1980s, in tandem with the erratic grid-supplied electricity. If the CBN proceeds without improvement in energy access, Nigerians will struggle to store milk safely in a country where power access is at a paltry 45%.
• Third, if the government’s aim is to help the cattle-rearing industry, as any reasonable government should, Preparing the measures more effectively is better than playing to the picture of the measures.

On the one hand, current milk producers will be likely forced to exit because of sub-optimal conditions that they are saddled with. If balanced, workable proposals for improving local milk production are not forthcoming from the government, more operational handicaps should not be grafted onto existing constraints. On the other hand, those not forced out will likely turn to capital-intensive methods. Precisely because ranching to meet the modern competitive needs of big dairy producers is a technology-intensive industrial activity.

Having been cajoled into ranching, better-groomed cattle owned by dairy producers will deliver bigger, better beef. They will likely sink small and medium-scale herders which government purports to help. Undermined in this way, herdsmen’s sense of insecurity is likely to fester. Forcing inefficient local milk production onto big dairy producers is liable to a twin deficit: that of economic under-performance and heightened security vulnerabilities. The dairy operators, their efficiency and cost-savings from imported milk undercut in the meantime, will still be unable to turn Nigeria, given its hotter climate, into a milk-exporting superpower!

In light of Nigeria’s recent signature of the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA), we need to proceed cautiously. Local food processing is a relatively low-hanging fruit for Nigeria in terms of developing competitive clusters to maximize AfCFTA. Rash protectionist lurches, including an imported milk ban without viable alternatives, are a quick way for the ship of Nigeria’s continental trade to start taking in water before it has even sailed.

Import controls, imposed even as local farmers fail to meet demand, have kept prices artificially high and led to smuggling from neighboring countries into Nigeria

The government can create enabling conditions with well-thought-out, comprehensive policy frames to support private-sector-led ranching. This will require a lot more in the way of studying and analyzing planned actions and likely multi-vector consequences, including on security as without this entrepreneur there can not be economic prosperity.