The former
Military Administrator in Jigawa state, Col. Abubakar Malayia has said that
government need to provide a very clear policy for the practice of organic
agricultural practice to reduce challenges that practitioners faced towards
achieving more potent food security in the country. Read the rest of his
excerpts below.
Can you introduce
yourself?
It is indeed a pleasure meeting you, my name is Colonel
Abubakar Zakaria Malayia, retired, I was in the Nigerian Army until 1999 as the
former Military Administrator of Jigawa State. Since then I have been engaged
into some business ventures, mostly to do with industrial raw minerals that is
processed into industrial applications for raw materials needed in the manufacturing industry, of course we also produce organic
fertilizers and agric life. So for the past fifteen year in our company, what
we have been doing is organic manuals for agricultural inputs and we are based
in Kano.
Can you share with us
some of your experiences from angle of both organic and conventional seeds
inputs?
Well, a lot of the experiences are more of the challenges,
as you will agree with me that ecological organic agriculture is a new
phenomenon in the annals of Nigerian farming calendar, and of course, organic
agriculture requires a quite number of knowledge visa -vis inputs utilization
and sourcing of raw materials for organic agriculture. One thing I know is that
it is quite challenging because there is no clear cut policy for it by the
Government thereby posing a serious challenge to practicing. Also most of the
practitioners are still very use to the
convention system as you will agree with
me that the conventional agriculture is still finding its well footing in the
country as a result of policy inconsistency cum other challenges like access to
fund, insufficent knowledge of practices as
the farming practitioners are still used to traditional farming. The basic
practitioners are farmers –up to 80% as against 20% of the other stakeholders.
Unfortunately many of them do not have access to fund to sustain their farms in
a more profitable ways. Extension challenges are also very worrisome. But I
want to believe that with the vast potentials of the country in agriculture,
there is hope that we will overcome inconsistency policies challenges and
summersault.
What is your take on
Ecological Organic Agriculture (EOA) initiative in Nigeria?
Well I think like today’s meeting which was being hosted by
the Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria (ARCN) is very good initiative.
This is the first time you find private practitioners and bodies like
Association of Organic Agriculture Practitioners of Nigeria (NOAN) and Organic
Farmers’ Producers, Suppliers Association of Nigeria (OFPSAN) of which I am a
member to both organizations interfacing. Of course there are other stakeholders
from the public sector. The purpose of the gathering is towards structuring
organic agriculture programme in the country with a road map. So we have a lot
of private sector associations that should be at the vanguard of organizing
this road map under one body with continuous cross fertilizing ideas and
initiating policies and ideas that will be potent to developing the practice of
organic agriculture in the country.
In the face of the
growing population, can organic farming be growing massive food like
conventional practice?
Well like I said earlier on, it is all about knowledge and
awareness, and if you look at most of the stakeholders, especially the teeming
farmers at the rural areas, most of the inputs they are using to complement organic contents of
the Nigeria abundant available soils ecology are inorganic fertilizers. So the
apprehension of organic agriculture not being able to supply or capable of
giving food security is not an issue to be afraid in Nigeria. What we are
saying here is that we are already used to traditional farming, and there is
need for awareness on the practice of organically produced animal and plant
crops for healthy and safety food to generate more income in terms of premium.
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