Don’t Play Politics with Agriculture- Farmers Tell Buhari

President Muhammadu Buhari has been urged not to play politics with Agriculture rather, he should piggyback on the Agricultural Transformation Agenda of the immediate past administration to move the sector to the next level.
This call was made in Ibadan yesterday, at the Town Hall Meeting organised by AgroNigeria sequel to its series of on-going agric interventions across the country.

During the meeting, the farmers, as well as the participants unanimously condemned the fact that Nigeria still imports food despite the size of the country’s arable land. They insisted that no Nigerian has any reason to be hungry had agriculture be given its rightful place in the economy. They therefore called for policy consistency on the part of President Muhammadu Buhari  instead of dissipating energy and the national resources on forming a new policy.

In his opening remarks, and precisely on why AgroNigeria has been organising the Town Hall Meetings, Chief Executive Officer/EiC, AgroNigeria, and Director-General Nigeria Agricultural Award Secretariat, Barrister Richard-Mark Mbaram stated that Nigeria is presently at a point where some critical decisions need to be taken.

His words: “We have had four years of the Agricultural Transformation Agenda. One thing we need to ask ourselves at this level as agric-stakeholders is: where will the next four years take us to? We are at a point where we need to actually take some drastic decisions as stakeholders. I said that because the present administration in this country is the one I consider to have evolved out of the will of the people and so the people have been able to change government effectively.
“We must be able to hold the government responsible. And we feel that having done so, the people should also have a say as to how the government is run. For us at AgroNigeria, we do only one thing, we focus on only one sector and that sector is agriculture. This is why we felt the need to touch base with the stakeholders on the ground to find out what you consider to be the critical aspect of the sector that the government should focus on,”  Mbaram said.
Speaking passionately, as every key group was ably represented, the stakeholders outlined their challenges, the hiccups faced with the Agricultural Transformation Agenda, as well as demanding for the continuous review of the policies to ensure they always reflect the interest of the grassroot in the sector.