Covid 19: President Buhari orders farmers back to farm

• NAERLS boss says no option to farming

President Muhammadu Buhari in his 8:00 pm broadcast has ordered all farmers across the nation to embark on immediate planting towards mitigating food challenges saying this decision is coming on the heels of full consultation with all the states’ governors.



This statement was made today by President Buhari during his 3rd national broadcast on Covid 19.

This President’s  directive to farmers may have put final rest  to the issue of farmers’ movement restriction, even as the economic lock down in FCT, Lagos and FCT has been extended with one more week, while  Kano state was just included with two weeks economic lock down to checkmate the spread of the disease.

President Buhari said that “We reviewed how our farmers can safely plant and harvest in this rainy season to ensure our food security is not compromised. Furthermore, we also discussed how to safely transport food items from rural production areas to industrial processing zones and ultimately to key consumption centres’’

 Meanwhile, the Executive Director (ED), National Agricultural Extension and Research Liaison Services (NAERLS) Prof. Mohammed Othman has proffered immediate return of farmers to planting activities saying it was a panacea to food insecurity especially in this pandemic  Covid 19.

Prof. Othman in an interview with Food Farm News stressed that the continuous food production across the country in this planting season by farmers would galvanise our food security against crisis that may occur due to hunger and other negative impact of  covid 19 on economic activities saying unrestricted  movement of farmers is very strategic to food productivity. 

He emphasised on the impending social crisis in case immediate actions were not taken saying that “if you don't go to farm there is no way you can produce, the production is not ordinary, it is physical and time entailing.

Farming does not have an alternative so we just have to farm, if we don't farm there will be no food, and if there is no food, there will be crisis. We also have to realize that this is a pandemic disease, it’s not only affecting Nigeria, but is affecting the whole world,  therefore, it can result to food shortage in many countries, and if your country is having shorter food than any other country it means that you are in trouble because there will be a lot of social crisis and social insecurity, so we have to go back to the farm and produce especially considering the population of the country, so we must find a way to ensure that our farmers go back to the farm’’.