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By Chinyere Anyanwu, [email protected]
The Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, like other ministries, received their helmsman, Abubakar Kyari, who was sworn in recently by President Bola Tinubu.
At the swearing in ceremony, Kyari promised to tackle head-on the problem of hunger, which he identified as the biggest challenge currently confronting the country.
As a guiding principle, stakeholders in the sector have since listed some critical areas that require urgent attention of the new minister if indeed he wants to deliver on his pledge.
Mr. Kenneth Obiajulu, Founder/CEO of Agricorp, for instance highlighted the need for the new minister to be prompt and intentional about implementing all mapped out agricultural policies aimed at re-engineering the sector to attain food security for the citizens.
According to him, “the new minister should look at how to achieve food security for Nigerians; how we are going to ensure that the inputs required by the smallholder farmers are made available to them. He should also look at the crisis in the poultry industry where poultry farmers don’t even have money to buy feed anymore because the price of maize has gone haywire, among other things.”
He further pointed out the need for the minister to urgently embark on a collaborative effort with the Ministry of Defence as well as other relevant ministries to ensure that the security situation in the country, which is impacting negatively on food security is addressed.
“There’s also need for inter-ministerial activity that needs to happen to ensure improved food productivity and availability. The security situation that has been hampering food production and distribution is not the task of only the agriculture ministry.
“The Ministry of Defence has to collaborate with relevant ministries to ensure that this security situation is addressed because it affects food security. Food can be produced but it’s not available because of insecurity that is not allowing farmers to bring their products to the market,” he said.
For Obiajulu, handling financing issues, fertiliser availability and the current rising cost of petroleum products, which contribute to the increase in the cost of food, are also among critical issues the new minister has to pay attention to.
He said, “These are critical issues he should be able to address. These include things that all the farmers and stakeholders in agriculture industry would want the new minister to focus on. I’m hoping we are able to deal with a lot of these issues.”
According to Mr. Babatunde Olarewaju, Lead Strategist, FutuX Agri-consult Ltd, a major area of concern, that requires the new minister’s urgent attention is the nation’s export market.
Olarewaju said the bureaucracy in the export market, especially export of agricultural products, is frustrating and needs to be reduced or done away with.
He also called on the ministry under the new minister to look into extending support to agro-produce exporters in getting their funds, which is very challenging at the moment. He noted that, “because they are getting dollars, they are helping this economy so the minister needs to see how he can support these exporters.”
With regards to policy implementation, Olarewaju stated that some existing policies that have either been abandoned or are being haphazardly implemented should be given adequate attention to ensure the purpose for their establishment is achieved.
According to him, the new minister needs to see how the framework of these policies would be reworked and tracked for strict implementation.
One of such policies he would want to see resuscitated is the e-wallet system of input distribution, which has long been abandoned.
He said, “we need to go back to the e-wallet system of input distribution to enable the smallholder farmer access released inputs. It has been the most successful initiative of the government but it has been abandoned. With e-wallet, a farmer can receive a text message that he/she can get fertiliser or any other input at subsidised rate from a dealer in their community.
“For the workability of the e-wallet, there’s need for accurate farmers’ data and it can be got through the interfacing of the government, private sector and farmers’ cooperatives. Many of them are registered with cooperatives so you can easily get their data from their database. Unfortunately, most of the database available in the agriculture sector is filled with political farmers. They are the ones who get access to these inputs. To get the accurate database of the real farmers, government needs to partner with the private sector and the farmers’ cooperatives.”
Another area Olarewaju wants the new minister to exert his weight is that of food safety. He wants emergency to be declared on the country’s food safety. He noted that, “though people argue that we don’t produce enough food so why are we talking about safety. Even the small one we’re producing should be safe so that people can eat well and live healthy. This has increased Nigeria’s rejects in the international market. Our foods are not safe in Nigeria. People engage in all sorts of sharp practices to ensure that food is produced because of high cost of inputs.”
The new Agriculture and Food Security minister seems to be aware of the daunting tasks facing his new office and with stakeholders’ collaboration, it is expected that his promise to tackle hunger will yield positive fruits to make the country better for for everyone
