Editorial -Why we commend the cancelling of National Council on Agriculture Meeting

The recent cancelling of the National Council on Agriculture (NCA) meeting by its organizer, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture And Rural Development (FMARD) is a step in the right direction, considering the saving of scarce funds that would have been wasted and the fact that government listened to voices of reason (as many raised their voices to oppose the earlier  schedule for the meeting, viz December 16-18, 2020) saying the timing might not portend the essence and purposes such a strategic meeting was meant to achieve in giving agriculture policy implementation direction for 2021.

Prominent among such stakeholders who expressed their reservation concerning the timing was the national president of All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Arc. Kabir Ibrahim who had observed in a piece he wrote to call for the cancellation of the meeting that “ the National Council on Agriculture is normally convened in the first quarter or latest April when the farmers are embarking on land preparation for rainy planting season, but certainly not in December, when they are harvesting and marketing.”

He noted that the meeting was meant to attend to various agricultural stakeholders’ memoranda from all the states of the federation including FCT in such a way that a communiqué would be issued to give at a glance agricultural policy implementation of the subsisting year in a uniform way, adding that the timing of the event is usually designed to really impact the budget and policy implementation across the nation. He however concluded that only a Government with ill motive would continue keeping date with the scheduled date of December meeting.

 No doubt, this voice and others’ call for the cancellation are words of wisdom at the nip of time as this cancellation or better still, the non holding of the NCA for the year 2020 will go down in the annals of the sector as an episode to be remembered for period of vacuum in policy direction cum a year of turbulence terrain occasioned by Covid 19 pandemic, climate change challenges and insecurity the country has experienced, which is taking its tolls economically. 

However, the cancellation itself has thrown up some questions such as: why was the meeting scheduled for December when it was known that the activities for the year was almost ended with the new year 2021 already knocking at the door, the first quarter of which the event could hold, if properly programmed to bridge the gap or fill the vacuum created by the cancellation of the 2020 event.

In as much as we commend and hail the cancellation for obvious reasons stated above, it will not be out of place to recommend that the National Agricultural Extension and Research Extension Services (NAERLS) be immediately commissioned to carry out agricultural performance survey for the year 2020 to at least show how Nigeria performed agriculture-wise, during the year. As the year 2021 rolls in, the Nigerian agriculture community, led by the minister should do well by bridging the policy gap that is sure to ensue from the meeting cancellation by coming up with suggestions for the way forward in the coming year.

 

Before we close, we wish to commend some of the ongoing agricultural interventions across the states of the federation through Agricultural Transformation Support Programme Phase One (ATASP-1) with the funding from the African Development Bank (AfDB) and Federal Government (FG) with about seven states; International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD/FG) programme and World Bank Agro Processing, Productivity, Enhancement and Livelihood Improvement Support (APPEAL). The great contribution of the projects to food security and economic empowerment of the youths and women in the rural areas are very enormous and must be as well be properly appraised for further commendation.