By; SANI ALIYU, Zaria
A cotton breeder expert with Institute for Agricultural Research (IAR/ABU) Zaria Dr. Muhammad Sama’ila Sagir has faulted government’s decision to scrap National Cotton Board which might help in rejuvenating the closed textiles in Northern Nigeria.
Dr. Sagir who stated this in an interview with journalists at his office, said government’s actions have also discouraged cotton farmers in Northern Nigeria from fully engaging themselves in cotton farming.
He added that during the era of Cotton Board, farmers and production boosted the Nigerian economy.
The cotton breeder expert said, despite the importance of cotton, yet government decided to neglect the farmers without any support until recently when it introduced Anchor Borrowers Scheme.
While lamenting the handling of agricultural programmes with laxity, with the real farmers sidelined, only to give serious attention to errand boys to corner the inputs meant for the real farmers, he said cotton is an essential commodity as nothing is regarded as waste from cotton.
According to the expert, despite all efforts by the institute in achieving various research results on cotton which presently there are about 26 different varieties of seed, yet the government is not helping to see that Nigeria maintains it’s heading exporting position on the product.
Dr. Sagir called on stakeholders on cotton production to come together and salvage cotton production from total collapse as a result of the “I don’t care attitude”.
