Agric Stakeholders’ Expectations from Tinubu

As the country ushers in a new administration into office, Gilbert Ekugbe, spotlights agric stakeholders’ expectations from the Bola Ahmed Tinubu-led administration

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu hit the ground running. In his inaugural speech, Tinubu stated his administration’s resolve to establish agricultural hubs throughout the nation and prioritise value addition and food processing to increase food the country’s food production.  

He assured that through these actions, food would be made more abundant and less costly as farmers would earn more while the average Nigerian would pay less for food products.

The president’s views were in line with those already expressed by stakeholders in the agricultural industry who had stressed the need to develop the nation’s agricultural value chain to boost food production and create wealth and job opportunities for the nation’s teeming unemployed youths.

According to Tinubu, rural incomes shall be secured by commodity exchange boards guaranteeing minimal prices for certain crops and animal products, maintaining that a nationwide programme for storage and other facilities to reduce spoilage and waste would be undertaken.

The move is expected to checkmate post-harvest losses currently put at N3.5 trillion annually.

The president also added that the livestock sector would be exposed to the best modern practices, stressing that steps would be taken to minimise the perennial conflict over land and water resources in the sector.

For now, the president has sounded brilliantly. But the crux of the matter is effective implementation. Otherwise, like successive governments before him, he will feed Nigerians empty stomachs with empty promises.

Without further ado, agro sector’s stakeholders are seeking an aggressive approach by the federal government to revolutionise the nation’s agriculture.  

Addressing rising food prices

They therefor urged the present administration to prioritise the food sector by creating a level playing field that would encourage farmers to produce more. It has been over flogged that the major reason responsible for the skyrocketing food prices is the inability of Nigerian farmers to produce more than the nation’s demand.

According to the law of demand and supply, the higher the supply the lower the price. For Nigeria to achieve this, farmers need to be supported and encouraged to produce more so that they could supply more to the market. Therefore efforts must be made to reverse the trend for farmers who still depend on hoes and cutlasses; farmers who have fled their farms over fear of being kidnapped by bandits; farmers with no access to modernised farm inputs and seedlings; farmers with little or no access to funds and farmers who struggle to get their produce from the farm gate to the markets as a result of poor access road networks.  

Ailing agric research institutions

Many agro research institutions across the country are more like grave yards. Despite several calls from stakeholders seeking to revamp these institutions for improved service delivery, they have remained either unfunded or underfunded as budgetary allocations to them have remained inadequate.

Juxtaposing Nigeria’s annual spend on its agric research institutes with other advanced economies of the world that have invested intentionally into their food sectors, showed that that Nigeria is yet to take the bull by the horn. The N291.4 billion allocated to the agricultural sector out of a budget of N16.9 trillion in 2022 showed that managers of the Nigerian economy are yet to tackle the age-long bottlenecks that have crippled the nation’s agric sector over the decades.

Improved collaborations with key agric stakeholders

One thing the Tinubu’s administration must prioritise is to appoint pro-business personnel that would help him to achieve his renewed hope agenda. Agric stakeholders have over the years lamented over the wide gap that exist between key agric stakeholders and the government.

There is need to always carry key agric stakeholders along especially during formulating and implementing agric policies that would shape the future of the nation. Increasing agric stakeholders’ engagement would no doubt give the present administration the opportunity to identify genuine agric gladiators and channel funds to the real actors in the sector. This would also block all the loop holes that have been created by successive governments who siphoned funds meant for agric development for their personal gains. The move would also ensure that most brilliant initiatives and programmes aimed at revamping the sector comes to fusion rather than remaining on the shelves.

investment in agri-tech

Many young and enterprising agripreneurs are making the nation proud with their innovative solutions targeted at attaining food security. All that these ‘agripreneurs’ needed is just a little push from the federal government to improve their technologies to reach a wider audience. There must be a political will to support ‘agripreneurs’ in the country by way of funding and policies to attract both local and foreign investors into the agri-tech space. Agri-tech would also go a long way to combat drudgery in agriculture. Many youths today are migrating to the urban areas in search of white-collar jobs. A country like Nigeria where the farming population is ageing, there is an urgent need to create the right environment for youths to be attracted into agriculture and only agri-tech can help to achieve this feat.