The Senate Committee on Agriculture has said that the Federal Government needs to do more in the agriculture sector if it is determined to diversify the economy.
The Vice-Chairman of the committee, Senator Theodore Orji, explained that the government needed to ensure adequate security by tackling decisively, the menace of Fulani herdsmen and providing proper orientation for the farmers on irrigation, in response to climate
change.
He added that necessary measures should be put in place to ensure that multiplicity of loans designated to farmers were accessed by the real farmers, not the relations and friends of the coordinators, who posed as farmers to collect these funds and subsequently divert them for other uses.
He said, “Government should ensure that, at least, 90 per cent of our lands suitable for farming are properly utilised. Record has it that Nigeria has approximately 84 million hectares of farmland of which less than half is being cultivated at the moment. The N118.9billion allocated to the sector in the 2018 proposed budget of consolidation is not sufficient, considering our present economic situation, but with proper investment plan and monitoring, we can rightly say that we are on the right track.
“We should not also forget the African Development Bank and World Bank’s $800 million, set aside for the provision of agriculture technologies to farmers in Africa, and another $24 billion investment plan in agriculture in Africa over the next 10 years, to help unlock its potential and assure food security in Africa.”
However, he observed that the greatest challenge facing the nation was how to ensure the proper utilisation of Nigeria’s portion of the largess to the best rewarding proportion.
He added, “This is where the role of other stakeholders as the watchdog of the society comes to serious play. They must monitor governance and public office holders and make them accountable to the society.
The consciousness of both the policy formulators and policy makers must be reawakened to ensure that the right things are
done
“Nigeria still spends billions of dollars on food importation annually and that means that we still have a lot of grounds to cover.
We cannot forfeit such colossal economic opportunity to foreign farmers and expect to successfully showcase Nigeria’s agricultural potential to the world.”
