The National President of the All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Arc Kabir Ibrahim has called for a more concerted efforts to drive Nigeria’s food system to sustainable food security.
He said this has become necessary in view of the escalating food inflation in the country which is driving the citizens to poverty and starvation.
Ibrahim in a statement made available to Financialtrust.com.ng, said Nigeria cannot be so endowed with abundant arable land and good weather conditions and yet the people are hungry.
Below is the full text
Nigeria’s food system has been taking a bashing since 2019 beginning with the COVID 19 pandemic, insecurity in the food producing areas, the dwindling fortunes of the Naira, incessant flooding, mismanagement of the CBN Anchor Borrower programme, energy inefficiencies, high cost of fertilizers as well as other inputs and an ineffective border administration to name a few threat factors.
The Buhari administration did a very good job by putting agriculture on the front banner through the Agriculture Promotion Policy (APP) from which the CBN Anchor Borrower Programme sprouted, the New NALDA policy of creating Integrated Farm Settlements, the Presidential Fertilizer Initiative (PFI), the social security net, the food security council, the enactment of several laws such as Seed Act 2019, the PVP Act 2021, the national agricultural development fund(NADF), the Right to Food Act 2022 and several other initiatives to revamp the food system, in fact, too numerous to mention!
Despite all the efforts enumerated we are experiencing a crushing food inflation never experienced since 1982/83.
To turn this tide around and attain food sufficiency and probably approach the realization of the much desired Food Security we do need to interrogate the following:
1). The implementation, monitoring and evaluation of all the policy framework of any programme must be done to ensure that all the desired milestones are attained within set timelines.
2). The people appointed to drive Agriculture must know what to do, be competent, hard working and necessarily of high integrity.
3). All MDAs with cross-cutting responsibilities with Agricultural production, processing, distribution, marketing and even consumption must work in absolute SYNERGY.
4). All farmer- associations by whatever name called should advisably speak and act as a unified group under AFAN with the sole purpose of adding value to Nigeria’s Agriculture and not work at
cross-purposes or in disarray as obtains today.
5). All appointed individuals in the Agriculture space should be promptly punished for any malfeasance and amply rewarded for uncommon performance.
6). We should continually and sensibly expand our cultivable and irrigable land.
The above six bullet points are short and medium term strategies.
In the long term strategy we recommend that:
1). Nigeria must fully mechanize Agricultural production.
2). make the energy sector fully functional
3). the transport system, especially, around the seamless movement of food must be very effective.
4). the processing or value-addition to Agricultural produce must be top-notch.
5). We must ensure the complete regigging of the Agribusiness Architecture.
Once we’re able to address these issues Nigeria will become a first World Country with sustainable food security and basking in prosperity.
Arc Kabir Ibrahim FNIA,
National President All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN).