Idris Ahmed
5 September 2008
To address fertiliser crisis and agriculture related problems in Nigeria, there is the need to ensure policy consistency that will be passed from one regime to another, former Governor of Nassarawa State has said.
Alhaji Abdullahi Adamu who was speaking as the Chairman, Board of Trustees of the National Agricultural Foundation of Nigeria (NAFN) said yesterday when he led members of his board to the Headquarters of Media Trust, Abuja that farmers need protection in case of disasters.
Speaking on the shortage of fertiliser in the country, he said instead of giving fertiliser to the farmers, it enters the wrong people's hand. He said: "Fertiliser in this country is not meant for the farmers, it is meant for the pocket, after all, fertiliser should not be different from salt and sugar. But because of vested interest, the procurement, distributions are cornered by the civil servants. The poor farmer who is supposed to get the fertilizer to improve his produce is sitting down there waiting until the end of the day when they will only get few cups. "This is because we have derailed, governments have derailed. This country requires a minimum of 3 million metric tones of fertiliser per annum but this year, the government was only able to buy just 650, 000 metric tones of fertiliser. So long as the actual users of fertiliser, that is farmers, are not allowed to partake in the procurement and distribution of fertiliser, fertiliser will not get to them." NAFN is organising an agricultural show from October 11 and 15 with the theme: "Food Security and National Economic Growth.
" The show, according to Adamu will attract participants from the 36 states of the federation as well as from international community. The essence of the show, he said, is to showcase what Nigerian has, the potential to produce and how to assist the farmers to ensure food security. "Food security is very important and that is the main thrust of our programme. But in doing this, we thought we should create a platform within Nigeria to showcase what we have as a country. In that regard, we want to get the primary producer of raw material to participate", he said. He decried policy inconsistency among successive governments which has drawn the country back. He said the country fails in its policies because there is no continuity in government programmes. He said: "A good programme will be going on and suddenly something would happen, new people will come into government and the programme is changed. That is the kind of problems that we have and one would say without any fear of contradictions that we need to begin to appreciate what we do over time from generation to generation. "If every body builds on the efforts of our founding fathers which we inherited, probably we would not have been where we are today."
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