Stakeholders in the agriculture sector on Tuesday lamented the neglect of the sector after the discovery of crude oil in the country.
A cross section of the stakeholders told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja that the country was still paying for the neglect of agriculture by depending solely on oil.
Mr Ezekiel Oyemomi, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, said that the country needed an attitudinal change to correct the anomaly.
He said that the Federal Government through the ministry had been giving incentives to the private sector to make agriculture more viable.
He said that the value-chain programme was one of the policies introduced by the ministry to make agriculture the mainstay of the economy once again.
The permanent secretary said that the ministry had also introduced the Growth Enhancement Support (GES) Scheme to alleviate the suffering of farmers.
He said that the scheme was an initiative of the Federal Government aimed at subsidising the cost of major agricultural inputs such as fertiliser and seeds for farmers in the country.
?Prof. Funso Sonaiya, team leader of the Poultry Value Chain Programme of the ministry said that there were indications that agriculture could still be the mainstay of the economy.
“I think the Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA) gives some hope because normally every regime comes and they make promises but the problem is that they don’t deliver,’’ he said.
A farmer, Mr Kayode Fagboro, argued that recent government intervention in the sector would add value to smallholder farmers.
He appealed to Nigerians to believe in locally processed food, saying that it was the only way agriculture could be relevant again.
Fagboro also urged all unemployed youths to embrace farming. (NAN)