The year’s lecture witnessed various key players and stakeholders discuss issues across the various value chains in the agriculture sector while also lending their voices to a new course of collaboration for growth and development in the country, through agriculture.
The Ooni of Ife; His Imperial Majesty, Oba Enitan Adeyeye Ogunwusi Ojaja II, was also present and addressed the gathering in what is seen as an enlightening speech.
The monarch noted that Nigeria is blessed with all resources needed to be economically buoyant but the resources have been under-utilized. He decried the fact that many Nigerians have ignored the potentials agriculture, and choose to blame the government for all and sundry.
“We put the entire blame on the government, but what are we doing? Let us stop deceiving ourselves, we have all we need, but how are we using it?” he asked the group.
Lending credence the Ooni’s position, the Vice-President of the Nigerian Agribusiness Group (NABG) and Chairman, Best Foods Global Limited, Emmanuel Ijewere highlighted post-harvest losses and logistics, and lack of innovation as challenges against agricultural productivity in Nigeria.
He called for sensitization of farmers on preventing post-harvest losses as this would save 70 per cent of their produce from perishing.
Stakeholders highlighted major problems mitigating against the growth of the sector as lack of accessibility of seedlings to farmers, failed policies, poor funding among others. They said the farmers were not consulted in the process of drafting programs and policies for the sector, hence serial poor implementation of such policies was inevitable.
Speaking on the state of agriculture in Nigeria, the Registrar, Nigerian Institute of Animal Science, Professor Eustace Iyayi, stated that Nigeria is at the point of recession where oil is no longer the option for survival. He opined that there was a need to explore new ways agriculture can be used to improve local production, while encouraging exportation.
In the words of Professor Iyayi, “there should coordination in policies; embrace innovation for crop or livestock production, there should be proper regulation so that we come up with processes that give us good product if we are targeting the international market”.
National President All Farmers Association (AFAN), Kabiru Ibrahim also addressed the gathering, stressing the need for small farmers to be the target of the policies of the government.
He also noted that the budget for agriculture was a far cry from the 10 per cent Maputo declaration signed by African states in 2003. Ibrahim opined that as long as lip service is being paid to the Maputo declaration, and only a meagre budgetary allowance is being given to agriculture, its growth would only be stunted.
The commercial sector also had representatives present at the gathering with Central Bank of Nigeria and the Bank of Industry at the core.
The overarching message was that though finance was very important; it was not the only essential element for productivity. They stressed on the need for synergy and capacity building via empowerment programs to encourage the youths to embrace agriculture. Progressive partnerships with non-governmental organisations and multi-national agribusinesses were also highlighted as key factors to attain progress in the sector.
The stakeholders however agreed on the need to address the issues effectively and create working synergies in order to increase Agricultural productivity for sustainable economic growth in Nigeria.
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