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| Ogbeh and Nwanze |
Many stakeholders say the pronouncement by President Buhari during his campaign and after being elected that he would pay greater attention to agriculture is indeed heartwarming.
According to them in the face of plummeting oil prices agriculture is expected to serve as a buffer for the Nigerian economy.
President Buhari had a few weeks ago reiterated his desire to develop agriculture beyond the level it is now and charged Nigerians to stop paying mere lip service to agriculture since crude oil and gas exports can no longer provide the country the much needed foreign exchange haven needed for Nigeria’s macroeconomic stability.
The President gave the charge at an audience with Kanayo Nwanze, the president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, IFAD, at the presidential villa, Abuja.
“It’s time to go back to the land. We must face the reality that the petroleum we had depended on for so long will no longer suffi ce. We campaigned heavily on agriculture, and we are ready to assist as many as that want to go into agricultural ventures,’’ he said.
He also pledged that his administration would also cut short the long bureaucratic processes that Nigerian farmers had to go through to get any form of assistance from government, adding that foreign exchange will be conserved for machinery and other items needed for production “instead of using it to import things like toothpicks’’.
With the appointment of Chief Audu Ogbeh as minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, many stakeholders say it goes a long to show that the president really want to further develop agric sector .
Ogbeh ho on his inaugural press briefi ng at the headquarters of FMARD, on Wednesday promised that his team would work towards reducing the $32bn spent on food import annually by Nigeria is seen by many as a good choice since he is a farmer.
According to National Publicity Secretary of the National Cashew Association of Nigeria, NCAN, Mr. Sotonye Anga, Now that a farmer is the minister of agriculture, it means that he will understand the terrain and set achievable agendas that will move the sector forward”.
Many stakeholders have said that the new Minister of Agriculture task given the performance of his predecessor Dr Akinwumi Adesina who truly transformed many aspects of the country’s agricultural sector.
Managing Director of Okomu Oilpalm Company Plc, a major agribusiness concern operating in Edo State, Dr. Graham Hefer, commended the choice of a practicing farmer as successor to a high fl ying technocrat.
According to him this is clear evidence of an intention to consolidate on the gains of the ATA, but he pointed out that “more work lies ahead”.
Indeed indicating his preparedness to deliver on this assignment Ogbeh promised to focus intensely on agricultural research and marketing in order to reduce importation of food and increase self-sustenance in Nigeria.
With the success of Efugo farms and the good record he has set in the past, many believe that Ogbeh will deliver in the agricultural sector and stay true to the course set by the immediate past Minister, Adesina, now President of the African Development Bank, AfDB.
Considering the impact of the ATA on the agric sector and the economy as a whole, several groups have called on the current government not to jettison the ATA, but to improve on its programmes.
Recently Buhari has been urged tovigorously pursue and implement the Agricultural Transformation Agenda, ATA, of the immediate past administration in order to move the economy and indeed the country forward.
This was part of the communiqué issued at the end of the One-Day South West Town Hall Meeting convened by AgroNigeria in Ibadan, Oyo State.
After an extensive deliberation, the Nigerian farmers (South-West zone), unanimously resolved that President Buhari should never politicise Agriculture, rather he should consolidate on the laudable policies of the immediate past administration especially ATA to move the sector to the next level. They maintained that the present administration should continue to pursue and implement the ATA which had started on a very sound footing.
They also recommended that all the states in the South West Nigeria should as a matter of priority, invest massively into commercial agriculture; insisting there must be urgent efforts calculated at bridging the gap in food production between the North and the South.
The forum also resolved that: “Policy formulations should adopt bottom-up and end-userdriven intervention approaches especially on fundamental issues affecting agriculture.
Experts have said that there is the need to resuscitated, strengthened the Farm Settlement Scheme to address the 21st Century needs of agriculture.
According to the experts attitudinal orientation should be encouraged and institutionalised by all stakeholders as this will address the negative impressions of the youth in going into agriculture. “Migratory Fulani herdsmen should be integrated into the national agricultural policy to proffer lasting solution to the frequent clashes between them and other farmers.”
The town hall meeting also advise that youth and women in agriculture should be accorded priority attention whenever policies on fi nancial interventions are being formulated; adding that there must be a national declaration of a state-of-emergency in agriculture that will insist on a policy that Nigeria has no reason to be food insecure.
Many farmers frown at the current huge infrastructural gaps in the rural areas and insisted same must urgently be addressed to make for a rewarding season for agricultural practitioners; adding that the communication gaps between farmers and policy implementation must be bridged. They argued that agriculture in all its ramifi cations must be projected and made to be profi table and worthwhile, and emphasis should be placed on training and capacity development for agric practitioners, especially women and youths.
Agric-friendly fi nancing policies must be encouraged especially among fi nancial institutions for wider impact on the economy, extension services should be given urgent priority attention as the current level of extension services are inadequate nationwide.
“Risk management and insurance policies should be tailored towards the generality of Nigerian farmers in order to make the sector competitive and attractive to investors”, experts said.
In spite of its successes the ATA, Joy Obiora of Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension, Federal University Oye-Ekiti, Nigeria, in her study said that the technology transfer sub-system which should naturally be the major stakeholder in ATA have weak capacities with regards to training, human resource development and workforce.
She said this apparently shows that the sub-system cannot meet up with the demands/ needs of the farmers and all other actors along the targeted commodity value chains in the on-going transformation.
“The study also reveals some strategies for strengthening the subsystem as capacity building for extension personnel, proper funding of extension, proper staffi ng of extension service among others.
“The study therefore strongly recommends increased funding and general strong support to the sub-system to make them relevant and effective in the transformation agenda”, she said.
According to Nwanze, IFAD had since 1985 been providing loans and grants in the nation’s agricultural sector to boost agricultural production.
“Nigeria has the largest portfolio of IFAD’s investment in Western and Central Africa and the second largest in Africa.
“But the case point here is that this country has all the endowments that it takes not only for it to produce enough food for its population but also to be the bread basket of region.
“And this is where my institution on my behalf, I offered our services and our support in the agenda of rural transformation as a key ingrate in this country’s economic and social development,’’ he said.
It would also be recalled that the immediate past government at the centre launched a N50bn farm mechanisation policy drive to take hoes and cutlasses into the museums and replace them with affordable and appropriate modern farm machinery”.
The Federal Ministry of Agriculture demonstrated full commitment to the promotion of increased food production in the country and the overall revitalization of the agricultural sector so that it can become a major employment outlet as well as an alternative source of income to the country. The commitment of the government to see this vision through is evident in the enormous efforts, activities, and policies being implemented in the agricultural sector.
According to some analysts Nigeria’s food importation was growing at a rate of 11 per cent per annum. The reality is that relying on the importation of expensive food from global markets fuels domestic infl ation; puts high pressure on the Naira, hurts the economy and contributes to rising unemployment as it replaces local production and displaces Nigerian farmers.
The efforts at transforming the agricultural sector is therefore government’s way of saying loudly that food importation is not sustainable fi scally, economically or politically and that it is no longer acceptable that at a period when other countries are becoming self suffi cient in food production, Nigeria is still importing food, including the ones it can produce in abundance.
Adesina made known the momentous achievements of the government in the campaign to sanitise and transform the nation’s agricultural sector. The former Minister mentioned that in an effort to guarantee the vibrancy of the sector, agriculture is now treated as a business and that the Ministry is integrating food production, storage, food processing and industrial manufacturing. He stated the resolve of the government to create jobs and wealth through agriculture and ensure food security by engaging in investment-driven strategic partnerships with the private sector in addition to undertaking investment drives to unlock the potentials of the States in agriculture.
Non availability of farm inputs namely fertilisers, seeds etc and the diffi culties farmers encounter in acquiring these inputs; have over the years been a major setback to the development of agriculture.
According to Adesina; the government is deregulating the seeds and fertiliser sectors as a step towards solving this age long problem. As it is, the government no longer buys and sells fertilizers and seeds; this responsibility has been handed out to the private sector, but the government provides 50 per cent support for seeds and fertilizers. Vouchers and electronic-wallets (mobile phones) are being used to better target subsidized inputs to farmers, with the target of reaching 5 million farmers per year.
Also, the government has established a Nigerian Seed Venture Capital Fund with the goal of raising the use of hybrid seeds from 8,000 metric tons to 1,000,000 metric tons, per year.
The Federal Government is establishing marketing corporations to facilitate marketing of agricultural commodities. The marketing corporations which will be owned by agricultural value chains and run as private sector-led institutions are to coordinate the production, investments.
External markets are being developed for cassava chips. In January 2012, a trade agreement was concluded to export 1 million metric tons of cassava chips to China, in two tranches of 500,000 MT each. The total benefi t to Nigerian farmers and processors will be N40bn.
Also records from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development have revealed that Private sector investments in fertiliser manufacturing have expanded, with over $5bn private sector investments in fertilizer manufacturing in the past three years.
It further revealed that the sector witnessed a turn around as the share of total bank lending expanded from about 2 per cent in 2011 to 5 per cent by 2013. Bank lending to seed companies and agro-input dealers expanded from $10m in 2012 to $53m in 2013; while bank lending to fertilizer companies expanded from $100m in 2012 to $500m by 2014.
The Agricultural Transformation Agenda, ATA, launched in 2012, is an initiative of the Federal Ministry of Agricultural and Rural Development to support the former President Goodluck Jonathan’s Transformation Agenda.
The goal of the ATA is to build commodity value chains and the institutions required to unlock the country’s huge agricultural potentials with the targeted outcome such as add 20 million tonnes of food to the domestic food supply by end of 2015, create 3.4 million jobs and ensuring import substitution through the acceleration of production of local staples; aimed at reducing dependence on food imports and turning Nigeria into a net food exporter. One of the major success stories of the ATA in 2014, was the revelation that Nigerian Food import bill had dropped by N466bn thereby adding N780bn to the economy during the period.
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