Professor of Farming System Agronomy, Prof. Bamidele Amujoyegbe has urged the government to make agriculture and food production a primary responsibility of the Local Government.
Prof Amujoyegbe from the department of Crop Production and Protection Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife strongly advocated this strategy as only viable way to closely supervise local farmers for maximum productivity.
Continental Economy Magazine engaged the Don of Agronomy in an incisive discussion to provide solution to the unpleasant situation of food shortage and the consequent unaffordability of food Nigerians currently face
In this interview, Prof Amujoyegbe stated clearly that the budgetary allocation to agriculture is yielding no commensurate result because the real farmers don’t get the provisions as they find it very difficult to reach federal ministry of agriculture located in Abuja.
”Supervising agricultural activities is not the role of the federal government. Agricultural activities should be the role of local government. Now, the question is, how many of the local governments are functional? This third tier of government is meant to involve in rural development; rural infrastructure. Therefore, agricultural development is supposed to be their role because they are closer to the farmers.
”I say this with all sincerity, whenever federal government budget money for Ministry of Agriculture, how much of that money gets to the rural level? How much of it do the farmers access? It is the local governments that know their terrain and topography and they know the farmers. You will see that, when we push food production supervision to the hands of local government, our agricultural productivity will improve.
Food production in Nigeria is in the hands of local farmers. How many large scale commercial farmers do we have in Nigeria?” said Prof. Amujoyegbe.
Prof Amujoyegbe lamented the less involvement of youth in agriculture. He sees this as the biggest danger since the local farmers are aging..
I am a lectures at the Faculty of Agriculture. Each year we produce hundreds of agric graduates. How many of them get involved in agriculture? Shortly after graduating, you see 80% of them walking around looking for jobs in other sectors..
Nigerian government should find a way to encourage the youth to get involved in agricultural production. He sited example of the experience he had in Kogi State years back where the government then would use tractors to open farmland, plough it and then apportion it for farmers to plant and tend the crops to harvest.
On the suggestion of temporal importation of food, Prof Amujoyegbe vehemently opposed the idea, emphasizing that Nigeria has all it takes to produce what we need.
”Let’s produce what we need. Experts that comes to Nigeria find it amusing and make jest of us. From Lagos to Ibadan and from Ibadan to Ile-Ife, the arable land there can produce enough food”; Prof Amujoyegbe said.
Prof Amujoyegbe lamented the menence of portfolio farmers that prevent the real farmers to access government financial interventions such as loans. This is also related to agricultural groups and associations that have been hijacked by politicians.
”In 2021, a list of farmers to access loan was compiled. They met me on my farm and I was somewhere number 700,000th on the list. They came again to tell me that my farm was qualified to get the loan. That was all I knew about the loan till today. There are a lot of farmers that only exist on book and they are the ones that have access to the money, real farmers don’t get loan.
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”Let government get serious with for production. Let government open expanse of land, distribute it to farmers, and provide them with other inputs. If maize is planted today, in the next two months, we will be harvesting, (early maturing maize). In the next three months, we will harvest grain. Am talking of ‘months’, not ‘years’.
”I don’t support food import. Let government fund agriculture through the local government, make farms safe and then provide market for agro products. With this, we will recover within few months from now”; Prof Amujoyegbe concluded.
