Stakeholders raise worry over minister of Agric

*AFAN demands taskforce

Majority stakeholders in the agricultural sector have begun to raise anxiety over  non-specific direction the present minister of Agriculture is taking to ameliorate food insecurity as prices rise beyond the reach of  average Nigerians in the country.

 Food Farm News authoritatively gathered that no concrete policy direction has been visibly taken to address food security challenges in view of the yearning of Nigerians for proactive measures for sustainable commercial food production since the arrival of Dr. Mohamod Abubakar to the ministry as minister.

The minister has been accused of not giving the sector the needed oxygen that would give a turnaround to commercial agricultural production being coming out of post covid 19 of 2022 negative impact on food security in Nigeria.

Many under anonymity have described the minister of being more concerned with his political ambition than the attention he supposed to have given to ensuring improvement in the execution of policies that would assist farmers and other stakeholders at the value chains of the sector to be more proactive in productivity.  

The youth enumerators have alleged the minister of long delay in the payment of their stipends on enumeration of farmers at the rural areas, saying the payments have dragged beyond necessary in view of the time the file concerning the issue had been passed to his table.

A source even told us that the usual national agriculture council meeting where decisions are taken for agricultural activities and budget spending for the year has not yet been held as the year is already in August, and is fast running to end without any concrete achievement.

However, the National President, All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Arc. Kabir Ibrahim has recommended a food taskforce to be instituted so as to make food productivity proactive enough to checkmate high prices of foods before the administration of President Mohammadu Buhari comes to an end.

Kabir Ibrahim said that there is nexus between insecurity and food security which required a close interrogation before the exit of the present administration, adding that the problem of hike food prices would make Nigeria extremely difficult to govern.

He advocated the following public and private organizations to be included in the taskforce as National Security Adviser (NSA), The DG, National Intelligence Agency (NIA) Heads of Army, Air-force and Navy, Civil Defence Services, the DSS, Police, Miyetti Allah, FMARD and AFAN.

The rest are the Ministry of communication& Digital Economy, the National Assembly Member (NASS), the judiciary, the President of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), the Sultan and the youth and women leaders.

AFAN president wanted President Buhari to charge the task force to come up with a tangible result within twelve weeks from the date of inauguration, adding that the lack of synergy between the stakeholders in the sector with institutional malfunction of the relevant ministries and parastatals as well as highly inadequate policy implementation had contributed to the current weak food system in the country.

He added that ‘‘ the last 7 years have witnessed the evolution of the Agriculture Promotion Policy (APP), the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Anchor Borrower Program (ABP), National Agricultural Land Development Agency (NALDA) several windows of credit, social safety nets, Medium Term Development Plan (2021-2025), signing up to AfCTA, interventions by AfDB, Development partners and heavy investments by the Private sector food sufficiency, and the much desired food security is still a mirage’’

Responding to when the National Council on Agriculture (NCA) meeting will come up, the Permanent Secretary (PS), Dr. Ernest Umakhike said the meeting is likely to come early or middle September of the year.