Buhari Directs Revitalisation of Agric Extension Services in Nigeria

Igbawase Ukumba in Lafia

President Muhammadu Buhari has directed the revitalisation of the Agricultural Extension Services (AES) across Nigeria for the delivery of efficient agricultural extension advisory services.

The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Mohammad Mammood Abubakar, disclosed this yesterday in Lafia at a two-day workshop for National Agricultural Extension Development Committee (NAEDC), adding that the directive followed a briefing by the ministry to the president in 2015.

According to the Agriculture Minister, “A special committee was instituted to review the Agricultural Extension Policy within the subsisting agricultural policies and recommend appropriate policies that will ensure the effective participation of all stakeholders in a stable policy environment with serious consideration of funding for the delivery of efficient agricultural extension advisory services.”

He, therefore, explained that the NAEDC meeting, being a forum for key agricultural extension stakeholders across the country, was a veritable tool to interact and a great opportunity to further clarify and amplify some of the on-going policy objectives of the present administration in the agricultural extension sub-sector.

“The forum had formed part of the Federal Department of Agricultural Extension (FDAE) strategy to achieve its key mandate of coordination of the Nigeria National Agricultural Extension System (NARES),” he explained further.

However, Abubakar lamented that it has been of great concern that NARES, which is the largest in sub-Saharan Africa, has not been able to engender the sustainable agricultural development that would have ensured both national and household food security, improved rural livelihoods and make Nigerian agriculture competitive in the global agricultural market today.

In his remark, the Governor of Nasarawa State, Abdulallahi Sule, expressed worries that as of today, the Agricultural Development Programmes (ADPs) were faced with the issue of under staffing which has negated the programme in meeting the World Bank standard of agricultural practices.

“It is for this reason that the government of Nasarawa State made concerted effort by collaborating with other organisations such as OLAM, AZMA, JICA, SASAKAWA Africa, IFAD, IITA among others, thereby opening frontiers of employment opportunities and filling the vacancies created in the programme,” the governor disclosed.