The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina,
has said his ministry focus is in fixing key issues that has hampered the
performance of the agricultural sector with a view to unlocking the potential
of Nigeria’s agriculture.
This, he also said
would move the sector from its ignoble status as one of the largest food
importers in the world to a food self- sufficient country, in addition to
expanding into export.
Adesina
disclosed this recently in Asaba to NaijaAgroNet, stressing that his ministry is
doing this through the rapid transformation of agricultural value chains by
treating agriculture as a money-making business and not as a charitable
development project.
The ministry, he said,
mustered the courage to break the jinx that for decades made successive
governments corrupt in Nigeria through the procurement and distribution of
fertilizers to rich and powerful politician farmers to the detriment of the
private sector and genuine farmers.
“Corruption was
incipient, as sand was mixed with fertilizers and sold to government, payments
were made for fertilizers not supplied and subsidized fertilizers were resold
back to government with a lot more sold off to neighbouring countries. To put
it bluntly, government was not subsidizing farmers; instead it was subsidizing corruption.
Farmers’ powerlessness worsened as high quality of seeds and fertilizers they
need to raise their farm productivity were taken over by the elite, the rich
and politically powerful.
“But we have changed
all that. Within the first 90 days of this administration; we ended the forty
year-old fertilizer sector racket and corruption. The old system of government
buying and selling fertilizers was scrapped, and all fertilizer companies were
required to sell directly to farmers and not government warehouses,” he said.
NaijaAgroNet learnt that the
introduction of the Growth Enhancement Scheme (GES) Electronic Wallet System
which has seen over 3.4 million farmers receiving their subsidized inputs via
the GES programme and Electronic Wallet Scheme has greatly improved the sector
which now target close to five million farmers by the end of the dry season.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Share ur views here