By; SANI ALIYU, Zaria
The All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN) has advised Nigerians leaders headed by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and farmers to think deeply and reappraise all efforts aimed at the attainment of food sufficiency to be able to take Nigeria out of the looming hunger.
Arch. Kabiru Ibrahim National President of the association gave the advise, following the current level of food inflation occasioned by stress in Nigeria’s food system sprouting from low productivity predicated on low mechanization, difficulty in access to credit, access to veritable and affordable seeds, access to manageable and ready-to-go transportation, inadequate smart agricultural facilitation, insecurity.
He said, lately, flood as well as drought in some places due to the severe effects of climate change are making it next to impossible to enable the average household to put food on the table.
According to him the various efforts such as the importation of some food items for a given period of time in defined quantities, support to Small Holder Farmers (SHFs) or Small Scale Producers (SSPs) and distribution of palliatives and agricultural input are clearly work in progress and should be implemented transparently and dispassionately for them to really impact the food system by immediately bringing down prices.
The usual harvest season low prices being awaited may not come through due to the devastating flooding all over the country during this year (2024).
The President who is also the President NABG and Chairman, BOT NAFN, noted that most probable respite can come by encouraging seamless agribusiness practices through AFCFTA and other available windows.
He said, the big players in agribusiness as well as small scale entrepreneurs should be incentivized to get cheap credit and seamless cheap finance in order to enable them to scale their activities of buying grains and other food items from our farmers at reasonable prices so that food items will be readily available and fairly affordable in the regular markets not superstores.
Arch. Kabiru also said the engine room of food production in Nigeria still revolves around SHFs, who should be encouraged to scale by making them get real value for their produce among a myriad of other incentives!
“Paliatives and wholesale or full scale importation of food into the nation cannot make Nigeria food secure and the effort in that regard will forever remain stop-gap or PALLIATIVE.
“The clarion call I am making to all Nigerians especially our leaders and farmers is that we should think deeply and reappraise all efforts aimed at the attainment of food sufficiency to be able to take Nigeria out of the looming hunger,” he advised.
