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By Chinyere Anyanwu [email protected]
Sixty-four years after gaining independence, Nigeria’s agricultural sector and food system are under serious duress, failing to realise their potential as catalysts for economic growth and stability.
Industry experts blame the persistent setbacks to lack of political will from successive administrations, coupled with policy inconsistencies and poor execution of initiatives aimed at revitalising the sector.
Other challenges choking the sector are; insecurity, climate crisis and deap-seated corruption.
Prior to independence and during the early years of self-determination, Nigeria boasted of a self-sustaining food system and a vibrant agricultural sector. The country was topping global charts in the production of various cash and food crops such as cocoa, palm oil, cassava, rubber, yam, groundnut, cowpea, among others.
The death knell sounded for the sector following the discovery and drilling of crude oil in commercial quantities in the late 60s. Agriculture was relegated to the backwoods of history as it was left at the mercy of rural smallholder subsistence farmers while other countries invested in their agriculture turning it into their economic mainstay.
However, with Nigeria’s population growing in leaps and bounds (statistics put it at over 200 million currently) and the challenge of sustainably feeding such growing population, agriculture has become indispensable. This accounts for several efforts by successive administrations to restore the sector to its former glory years.
The efforts have come in the forms of policies, initiatives and programmes targeted at resuscitating agriculture and subsequently, the food system.
A cursory look at some of these policies, initiatives and programmes reveal that in the early 60s the federal and state governments, in collaboration, designed the National Accelerated Food Production Programme (NAFPP) to increase the production of major staple foods of Nigerians to check hunger and food crisis.
In 1976, government launched Operation Feed the Nation (OFN) “to address the problem of rising food crisis, rural-urban migration and escalating food import bills; to mobilise the general public to participate actively in agricultural production and ensure self-sufficiency in food production,” according to Daneji, M. I. of the Department of Agricultural Economics & Extension, Bayero University, Kano.
The Green Revolution Proramme was birthed in 1979 to boost farmers’ production through the provision of incentives.
The National Agricultural Land Development Authority (NALDA) was developed to eliminate the problem of low farmland utilisation in order to increase food production.
In 1972, the Agricultural Development Programmes (ADPs) were started in some locations in the North to “provide infrastructural facilities such as roads, schools, water supply in the rural areas at the right times in required quantity to farmers.”
The Babangida administration established the Directorate of Foods, Road and Rural Infrastructure (DFRRI) in 1987 with the aim of opening the rural areas through the construction of access roads and provision of basic amenities of modern living, which will in turn have positive impact food accessibility.
The administration of Yakubu Gowon established the National Accelerated Food Production Programme (NAFPP) in 1972 to cushion the effect of the Nigerian civil war on the country’s food security as well as increase the country’s food production through proper education of farmers on farming and production.
In 1973, the River Basin Development Authority (RBDA) policy was established with the aim of “providing irrigation facilities through the construction of dams, provision of potable water and construction of feeder roads to ease agricultural activities, boost food production and the standard of living of small-scale farmers.”
The Agricultural Development Project (ADP) was established in nine local governments in 1975 and was replicated in other states of the country following its success.
In 1976, the military government headed by Olusegun Obasanjo introduced Operation Feed the Nation (OFN), which focused on increasing food production to ensure availability of cheap food that will lead to higher nutrition level, national growth and development.
The Shehu Shagari administration introduced the Green Revolution Programme (GRP) in April 1980 to ensure self-sufficiency in food production and to introduce modern technology into the Nigerian agricultural sector through the introduction of modern inputs such as high yielding varieties of seeds, fertilisers and tractors.
Obasanjo, during his come back as a democratic president, established the National Special Programme for Food Security (NSPFS) with the aim of helping farmers to increase output and income, strengthen extension service delivery, promote simple farm technologies, utilise land, water and other resources for food production.
In 2008, the Umaru Yar’Adua administration launched the National Food Sector Plan (NFSP) to partly fund FADAMA III; IFAD and ADB projects in addition to rehabilitating and constructing dams.
The Agriculture Transformation Agenda (ATA) was created by the Goodluck Jonathan government in 2011 with the intention of “boosting the income of smallholder farmers and rural entrepreneurs, who are engaged in the production, processing, storage and marketing of selected commodity value chains on a sustainable basis,” according to a stakeholders’ report.
Muhammadu Buhari’s government launched the Agricultural Promotion Policy (APP) in 2015 to consolidate on the existing ATA policy. Its aim was to provide a conducive legislative and agricultural framework, macro policies, security enhancing physical infrastructure and institutional mechanisms, in order to boost access to essential inputs, finances, information on innovation, agricultural services and markets.
During Buhari’s administration, the Federal Government, in collaboration with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), designed the import restriction policy in 2016 which banned or restricted the importation of 41 items including some finished agricultural commodities that can be produced in the country. The aim was to encourage farmers to increase production of these commodities with hope of ensuring food sufficiency and improved livelihood for them.
