Nigeria is now entered into the 54 years of being independent state by hitting various milestones whether it is economical or social.
According to major stakeholders of the country, the Agriculture Agenda (ATA) heading in the right direction greatly helps the sector in attaining the desired consequences and accomplishments since the development of oil sector. There are many instances and success stories wrote by Ruth Tene Natsa related to the challenges faced by the agriculture sector.
Beforehand in 1960, Nigeria’s agriculture was the only vivacious industry and the key economic source for generating higher amount of income and a major contributor in Nation’s total Gross domestic Product (GDP).
In early age, Agriculture was the hotspot for any economy to mitigate poverty level, raising job opportunities and a major source to earn foreign exchange through export of different items such as groundnuts, palm, cocoa, cotton and various other items which were highly exploited for carrying out the development activities of nation’s infrastructure.
Since the invention of oil occurred in 1960s, the investors started ignoring the agriculture sector to a greater extent and rushed out making their investment towards newly discovered oil sector. This led the huge amount of stakeholders into few numbers who were practicing in the same sector at a sustained level.
The high overlook over the Agriculture resulted in pitiable investment and the practices had been restricted and went on subsistence point. The farmers encountered with heavy losses on account of post-harvest, the sector were losing its tempted image in front the youth while the investors and funding institution assuming it as non-profit sector. After 54 years, with knowing the fact that oil will not last for more than 30 years, the ministry of agriculture and rural development under the Jonathan’s government initiated the ATA campaigning with the intention to develop agriculture sector in such a manner that will enhance its attractiveness in front of investors as well as youth generation through the setting up of the Nagropreneur in 2012.
With the effective measure taken by the government in the form of ATA had fruitfully managed to register over 10 million farmers in its record to facilitate from growth enhancement scheme (GES).
Adesina reported that “We are the one who create the database for farmer in order to recognize them and effectively manage the farmer’s identity. More than 14.5 million farmers have been listed in the last three years. Nigeria has become the first ever country to perform this measure and the farmers are being migrated into the national e-identity card system which enables them to use of their biometric information to successfully marking them and make them available for financial enclosure.”
The national government of Nigeria has already stipulated to finish off the four decades of corruption in fertilizer sector during the period of 90 days. Therefore, with this intention, the government is duly performing buying and selling activities of seeds and fertilizers as replaced from the system drive through private. The direct involvement of the government greatly assists in arranging targeted programs for ensuring direct support to farmers for the seeds and fertilizers through online means such as giving coupons on mobile phones or “e-wallet.” It has been observed that from the period of 2012 and 2014, more than 14 million farmers has been facilitated from government’s subsidized programs for farm industry via electronic coupons on their mobile phone and they only need to pay directly to private retailers
Moreover, the government has also set up proper mechanism for the development of privately held seed companies. According to federal government, the updated system has ended up the supremacy over the purchasing of seeds and then rolled it to all the private sector. He further added that the number of Nigerian’s seed companies have been mounted from 5 to 80 during three years, whereas the international investors’ attention have started diverting in Nigerian market involving Syngenta and Dupont; two biggest seed companies in the globe as the demand of seeds has outshined the overall supply. The total private sector spending in manufacturing of fertilizer has also increase to reach $5 billion during the last three years.
The revival of the sector can be noticed from the fact that the total bank lending accounted 2 percent in 2011 which was then expanded to five percent in 2013. The total bank lending issued to seed companies and agro-input dealers stimulated to $53 million in 2013, when it was just $10 million in 2012. On the other hand, bank gave loans to fertilizer companies stretched from $100 million in 2012 to $500 million by 2014.
Moreover, the ministry of rural and agriculture development didn’t stay back and approved the 100 million private equity funds for agriculture related activities in Nigeria. The funds are specifically designated as the Fund for Agricultural Financing in Nigeria (FAFIN). This measure is a joint effort of German government and the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority with a preliminary capitalization of $33 million. The association is supervised by private sector fund managers, FAFIN is offering equity and quasi-equity long term financing for Nigerian agribusinesses across the value chain.
