Hon. Mohammed Tahir Monguno, who represents Monguno/Marte/Nganza Federal Constituency Of Borno State, is the Chairman, House Committee on Agriculture. In this interview with CHRISTIANA ESEBONU, he says Nigeria must subsidise agriculture for the country to achieve food security.
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Is the goal of national food security and self sufficiency by 2014 realisable given the agricultural challenges on ground?
It is feasible. Once there is a political will to do it, there will be a way because, right now, why agriculture is taking the backseat is that enough priority has not been given to the agricultural sector. For example, agriculture produces about 40 percent of our GDP and agriculture employs about 70 percent of the Nigerian population but, ironically, we are only allocating about three percent of our budget to agriculture. So, right now, what we intend to do is to see that we allocate about 10 percent of our budget to agriculture in tune with the Maputo Declaration that urges all African countries to allocate at least 10 percent of their national budget to the agricultural sector and it is pursuant to this that even countries like Ethiopia, Chad, Malawi and even Niger are allocating more than 10percent of their budget to the agricultural sector. So if Nigeria is not paying lip service to reviving agriculture, giving food security to the country, creating more employment, then we should raise the allocation to the agricultural sector to more than 10 percent of the budget.
If we are to reverse the ugly trend of spending more than N1.3 trillion on food importation annually; if we are to channel that amount to revamping our moribund infrastructure and creating more employment for our youths, then we have to revive agriculture with a view to feeding our youths rather than importing food products worth N1.3 trillion yearly. We are creating employment for other people outside the country rather than creating employment for our teeming youths because this N1.3 trillion, if retained in the Nigerian economy, will have a multiplier effect that cannot be quantified. So, we must revive agriculture.
What specific steps can be taken to revive agriculture?
It can be revived by making it attractive, by giving loans to our unemployed youths – hich is the same thing as subsidizing agriculture. If we can subsidise petroleum, I see no reason why we cannot subsidise agriculture. In the European countries, agriculture is subsidised up to 20 percent of their national budget.
How can the youths and the general public be sensitised so that they can embrace agriculture for food production?
We have to embark on a massive and aggressive public enlightenment campaign by enlightening the people, as well as our youths and the unemployed in the urban and rural areas, about the need to go back to the land and we can only do that by giving them loans and subsidising agriculture. That way, we can make agriculture attractive.