Editorial- Why is FMARD taking the back seat in its mandate?

 The recently held dialogue on global food system summit organized in Nigeria, championed under the supervision of the Permanent Secretary (PS), Federal Ministry of Budget and Planning, Dr (Mrs) Olusola Idowu has conspicuously exposed some lapses that are begging for the role of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) who had statutory mandate of policies formulations and implementation as regards food security in terms of productions in the country at the primary levels.

As rightly also observed and pointed by many stakeholders who had consistently been wondering why many of the functions that are meant to be performed by the FMARD, or probably in conjunction has of lately been taken over by other ministries and agencies who are now performing the functions, like it is observed with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) agricultural anchor programmes.

                       

This recently organised summit on global dialogue on food systems held on 23^rd February, 2021, at NAF centre, Abuja by UN and Nigeria government has glaringly buttressed this notion as none of the two ministers of the FMARD were physically present in the function of such magnitude, but rather they were represented by an Assistant Director in the ministry. This to our opinion is more of relegation in terms of role the ministry ought to have played in the whole exercise in relation to notes taking in order to effect pragmatic changes for medium and long terms towards ensuring sustainable value chains food system.

All these are what motivated us to calling on FMARD to wake from its slumber towards building a sustainable food systems through the two major government ministries, particularly itself and Federal Ministry of Industry trade and Investment (FMITI) whose mandates are very strategic to food production, processing and marketing in terms of policies and implementation.

This editorial is not at all intended to take a swipe on anybody, but rather to point out some of the lapses that we feel have short changed our food value chains system ditto, uncoordinated agricultural activities operating in different agencies of the Federal Government (FG) that we have witnessed in the country recently since the departure of former Minister of Agriculture, now African Development Bank President (AfDB) President Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina who had laid a structure that subsequent ministers of the ministry ought to have followed and even improved upon. Unfortunately, the ministry’s leadership incapacity to well articulate sustainable programmes for food security had made many people to lose confidence in its service delivery, despite increase in fund releases in the past few years for it.

Of recent, the CBN has become a centre or better still as popularly called in some circles as the new ministry of Agriculture, but the question is with what programmes and implementation policy strategies  is it subsisting as apex bank to drive the production and processing without the role of FMARD and even FMITI together.

Our curious question is who among the ministries parading themselves in food security matters can be held responsible for inaction to food hunger in Nigeria between the ministries of Finance and Agriculture, even though we quite agree they have to synergise, but honestly someone owns the responsibility of the food security matters more than the other. And this must not be taken away from the FMARD no matter how the case maybe for us to avoid destroying strong institution around our agricultural activities in terms of programme and implementation.

The last media dialogue on zoom organized by UN on global food systems had a consultant although a retired director from the FMARD representing the ministry, so the question is where are the substantive officers of the ministry? Could it mean there are no more substantive directors or even Permanent Secretary (PS) of the ministry that can speak on the policies and implementation programmes that have impacted on food security?  This really gives us a concern as much as we commended the knowledge base of the ministry’s representative, but the fact still remains it a reflection of a great gap on the part of the ministry.  

                          

We are calling on Federal Executive Council (FEC) to look into this matter, and ensure that the ministry of Agriculture is not being denied its statutory mandate towards food security in a very inclusive manner with other Ministries and agencies of the Federal Government without being isolated, or kept not in the know of what is happening in the sector as being presently experienced all over many agencies of the same Federal Government (FG), while we call on the FMARD to take the front seat by being more proactive and proficient in its duties towards sustainable food value chain systems.