President Goodluck Jonathan, has lamented Nigeria’s continued importation of food staples even as she is richly endowed to be a major global player in agriculture.
The president made this lamentation at the Sixth annual National Agricultural Show 2012 holding in Karu Local Government Area of Nasarawa State.
Represented by the Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, he wondered why the nation which boasts of over 84 million hectares of arable land imports food produce to the tune of $11 billion dollars yearly which in turn fuels inflation.
The president who scored the government high on its e-wallet fertiliser sales scheme said 900,000 farmers benefitted from the scheme in the current farming season and the number is expected to reach 1.5 million next season.?
?? He also commended government for eliminating middle men and government from fertiliser procurement, distribution and sales, a situation he claimed had prevailed against the peasant farmers over the years leaving the commodity in the hands of illegal dealers and their facilitators in government.
In his keynote address based on the theme of the event, “Promoting sustainable Investment in Agriculture in Nigeria” Governor of Nasarawa State, Umaru Tanko Al-Makura, emphasised that food sufficiency was a critical part of national security and general wellbeing of every society.
In the address read by his deputy, Hon Dameshi Barau Luka, he noted that “any government worth its name must place agriculture at the front burner of its development efforts.”
The Governor insisted that it was time government at all levels “departed from the lip-service posture that agriculture, which employs over 70 per cent of our population, has been made to suffer.”
?Delivering his address, the Chairman Board of Trustees of the National Agricultural Foundation of Nigeria (NAFN), organisers of the show, Senator Abdullahi Adamu, said that the nation’s agricultural sector was very sick and stressed that it was “important and necessary that we fully gauge and appreciate the enormity of the problem facing the agricultural sector and its implications for our economy, politics and sovereignty as an independent country.”
He pointed out that the nation’s leaders of whom he is one have failed in their responsibility of tapping into the potentials of agriculture to ensure food security and provide employment.
?Senator Adamu queried, “how can we have peace, a necessary condition for development, when inflation is being fuelled by food imports, when unemployment rate is rising, when the level of poverty among the masses is at all time high and when hunger is ravaging the land?”
?