Legislation of Agricultural Development Plan; A panacea to agricultural stagnation and policies somersault in Nigeria

Agriculture is the largest employer of labour in Nigeria employing about 30 percent of the population on full time basis and about 50 percent on part time basis. Before the discovery of oil, Nigeria used to be a major player in the global agricultural market as the country was the world’s largest producer and exporter of groundnuts and palm oil in the 1960s.

Nigeria has comparative advantage in agriculture, with 35 percent arable land, abundant fertile soils, a population of about 200 million people, ample and reliable rainfall, uncountable agrarian communities,   moderate sunshine etc.  Despite these comparative advantages, the huge potentials of the sector is yet to be tapped and as such,  agriculture remains largely underdeveloped making small holder farming form large percentage of the sector.

Successive governments have taken different actions to develop the sector through policy frameworks and implementation strategies that are supposed to result in sustainable development and food security but these policies have failed at propping up agricultural productivity in the country.

Below are agriculture policies initiated by different administrations in Nigeria and major reason for policy collapse:

S/N	Programme	Year	Objective	Major reason for collapse
1	Farm Settlement Scheme (FSS)	1959	making young people take agriculture as a career by settling them in an area, training and equipping them  in agricultural enterprises	Settlers were too young, inexperienced and continually depended on stipends which was not forthcoming thus causing a high percentage of drop-outs among the settlers.
2	National Accelerated Food Production Programme (NAFPP)	1972	bringing about a significant increase in the production of staple crops.	Abrupt/premature withdrawal of funding by the Federal Government due to the introduction of another programme termed Operation Feed the Nation.
3	Agricultural Development Projects (ADP)	1974 and 1989	provision of extension services, technical input support and rural infrastructure to small scale farmers to increase food production.	failure to keep to counterpart funding by state governments, high frequency of labour mobility.
4	Operation Feed the Nation (OFN)	1976	increasing food production in the entire nation through the active involvement and participation of everybody in every discipline.	There was abundance of food in the market and less demand for the food because many people produced part or almost whole food they consumed.
5	River Basin Development Authorities (RBDAs)	1976	boosting economic potentials of agriculture using water bodies for irrigation.	substantial public funds were wasted to streamline sizes and functions of river basins through the disposal of their non-water assets.
6	Green Revolution (GR)	1980	increasing production of food and raw materials in order to ensure food security and self-sufficiency in basic staples.	delay in execution of most of the projects involved in the programme. no monitoring and evaluation of the projects for which huge sums of money were spent.
7	Directorate for Food Roads and Rural Infrastructure (DFRRI)	1991	to improve the quality of life of the rural dwellers	lack of proper focus and programme accountability
8	Better Life Programme (BLP) For Rural Women	1987	stimulating agricultural productivity by motivating rural women towards achieving better living standards.	Programme was over hyped and was characterised by massive corruption.
9	National Agricultural Land Development Authority (NALDA)	1992	giving strategic public support for land development, assisting and promoting better uses of Nigeria’s rural land and their resources.	land that belonged to poor people were illegally acquired.
10	National, Special Programme on Food Security (NSPFS)	2002	to increase food production and eliminate rural poverty.	inability of majority of the beneficiaries to repay their loan on time.
11	Root And Tuber Expansion Programme (RTEP)	2003	to achieve food security and stimulate demand for cheaper staple food such as cassava, gairi, yam, potato etc as against more expensive carbohydrate such as rice.
12	Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA)	2011	to build commodity value chains and agricultural institutions and ensuring import substitution through the acceleration of production of local staples	Too many programmes were launched at the same time giving no room for proper monitoring and evaluation.
13	Green Alternative	2016

A critical look at the agricultural policies above suggests that all the policies were aimed at accelerating agricultural production for self-sufficiency but the question is, despite all these policies, has the sector surmounted problems impeding it from attaining self-sufficiency? What remained of these policies are abandoned infrastructures scattered all over the country.

The agricultural sector still faces many challenges, notably constrained access to land, a very low level of irrigation development (less than 1 percent of cropped land under irrigation), weak agricultural extension system, high rural urban migration, poor quality agricultural inputs, rural infrastructural deficit, under funding of research institutes, poor access to credit, inadequate storage facilities, poor access to markets, Poor farming methodologies, poor transport infrastructure, farmers-herdsmen clashes etc.

The last agricultural policy, Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA) was an impressive policy. The policy had programmes like Growth Enhance Support Scheme (GESS) which was meant to provide support directly to farmers to enable them procure agricultural inputs at affordable prices at the right time and place, Staple Crop Processing Zone (SCPZ) which focuses on attracting private sector agribusinesses to set up processing plants in zones of high food production, Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk-Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) which aims to reduce the risks of financing institutions while granting loans to farmers, Rural Finance Institution Building Programme (RUFIN) which targets to alleviate poverty with a particular focus on the rural poor especially women, youth and the physically challenged by supporting rural cooperative societies and grass-root informal finance institutions with capacity building and access to loanable funds, Youth Employment in Agriculture Program (YEAP), to direct Nigerian youths in a career in agribusiness, wallet system, etc. The policy also had intervention programmes for major staples like Cassava Bread Development Initiative, Rice Mills Intervention Project etc.

The ATA policy was characterized by huge investments from government and donor partners but little achievement was recorded due to implementation deficiencies. Therefore, the problem of agricultural sector is not policy no matter how beautiful it is, It is implementation and consistency.

The present agricultural policy, the Green Alternative is meant to deepen and widen on the successes of ATA and also to correct on the mistakes of ATA but how sustainable is this? Will successive governments continue to widen and deepen on previous agricultural policy for development?

Nigeria cannot afford to have agricultural policy every four-four years as a policy might not be fully implemented in a tenure of an administration. It is high time Nigeria adopted a mechanism that would ensure consistency and continuation of agricultural policies in the country. For example, the Common Agricultural Policy being practiced in the European Union (EU) was introduced in 1962 and has been implementing agricultural subsidies and other programmes in the EU.

The National Council on Agriculture (NCA), the apex decision-making organ on issues concerning the agriculture sector in Nigeria which comprises all stakeholders should come up with a 10 year agricultural development plan that should be legislated by the National Assembly. The plan which will ensure continuity and consistency will be subject to a periodic review by the NCA.

This developmental plan will be a guide to all Ministers of Agriculture and will address the issue of policy somersault and underdevelopment in the sector.

Written by Kehinde S. Jimoh