Editorial- Repositioning Agric through the states and local governments

The present state of Agricultural development will escalate if the strategy for its drives is not repositioned to be majorly championed by the bottom-top approach whereby the local and state governments are more responsive to initiating and driving the policies of their own considering the law of comparative demand advantages before embarking on production.

For now, the present agricultural development progress towards food security can be largely attributed to the Federal Government policy most of the time, and upon this, the achievement recorded cannot be equated to what is being obtained when the regional approach to agricultural development are fully deployed with cocoa synonymous to the Western region, groundnut to the North and palm oil to the East with maximum local and export earnings to the nation’s economic development. However if this tempo has been maintained, most of the arguments put up in defense to the present arrangement of agricultural development may have not scored any point as each states and local government would have developed a standard model capable of checkmating any challenge with more financial investment in the sector.

The present arrangement where the Federal Government is always taking the lead in any agricultural programme of the entire nation may not be realistic to create the anticipated result of job creation and food security as often  times diverse policies between the tripartite stakeholders is always at the detriment of rural farmers. 

It is obvious that agriculture is expected to be run in a concurrent manner whereby the sector will be funded both by the local, states and federal government, but most of the time the overcrowded dominance appearance of the apex government always make some of the  states and local government shack in the their responsibilities to agricultural development.

In the face of the dwindling oil price in the world market, Nigerians especially at the local and states’ levels should begin to ask questions on how budget meant for agricultural development are spent through their policy templates as doing this will ensure more positive impact on the sector in the lives of people especially at the rural areas.  

At the last year local government official meeting held in Abuja, the officials complained about the total neglect of the sector despite the much contribution of the federal government through the Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA) saying nothing is happening at the local governments where the impact supposed to have been properly felt as more importantly most of them do not have a defined policy direction of their own for agricultural development thereby making it difficult to do any tangible things in this regards.

In our bid to ensure maximum food security, the state and local government authorities must be ready to embark on comprehensive agricultural programme of production, processing and global marketing thereby reducing the overcrowded  responsibility of the federation government to food security being well complimented by the other arms of governments in a comparative advantageous ways.