Nigeria adopts new agriculture policy

Nigeria adopts new agriculture policy

Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture has unveiled a new plan aimed at ensuring the protection of local and foreign investments.

Audu Ogbeh told journalists after this week’s Federal Cabinet meeting, that his ministry was talking with the Interior Ministry about training personnel, to take up that responsibility.

TVC News State House correspondent Tai Amodu reports that the cabinet has endorsed a document containing all policies needed to make agriculture the alternative to oil.

The document, called “The Green Alternative,” contains objectives, policies and  interventions needed to be put in place in order for Nigeria to achieve self sufficiency and become a major importer of  agricultural products as it used to be in the 60s and 70s.

Ogbeh concedes that times are hard and there is severe shortage of food, noting that this is due to the fact that Nigeria imports a large part of the food it consumes.

Identified as likely to hinder policies put in place, are the menacing activities of herdsmen, that is slowly spreading all over the country, and Ogbeh disclosed that his talks with the Ministry of the Interior is to set up a unit in the Civil Defence Corps dedicated to guarding investments in agriculture.

Ogbeh believes the permanent solution to this menace, is paddock development or ranching which  will put the cattle to pasture and ensure that herdsmen are curtailed  from roaming and can pay tax.

He conceded that the farmer-herdsman conflict is a cross-border problem and in the end Nigeria will have to tackle the issue through laws at the level of  ECOWAS, the sub-regional body.

The Agriculture Minister is optimistic that within the next year, efforts made to curtail present challenges faced in the agriculture sector through the policy document just launched, will have begun to yield fruit.