Stakeholders in the agriculture sector have expressed their views on the donation of 25,000 metric tonnes of wheat by the Ukraine government through the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), to help provide emergency food assistance to affected people in the northern part of Nigeria. The Deputy Chairman, All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Lagos State Chapter, Shakin Agbayewa, stated that if a war-torn country can donate 25,000 tonnes of wheat to Nigeria, it does not portray Nigeria as a serious nation, saying “If a country that has been in turmoil in the last two years can deem it to give a thriving country like Nigeria 25,000 metric tonnes of wheat to the north it means something is wrong somewhere”.
He said that though since it is a temporary measure to cushion the effects of hunger on the nation, it is a good initiative for “We know what is going on in the country, the high cost of our staple food, wheat is one of it, and as it is right now all wheat related bye- products are on the high side for instance flour to bake bread and the likes which is a staple food in Nigeria”. Agbayewa noted that it is the northern part of the country that is known for wheat production and must, as a matter of urgency, embark on wheat production across board because wheat is a staple food in Nigeria. On his part, the National President of All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Kabir Ibrahim, has called on Nigerians to put all hands on deck to make the country work properly towards achieving food sufficiency.
He said that he was pained by the development where a country at war is able to donate food to Nigeria. He said it is very sad and shameful to him as a farmer. Also, the Managing Director of Bama Farms, Wale Oyekoya, stated that the Ukraine government acted on humanitarian grounds as expected of them by giving out their excess to the needy like Nigeria. “It shows that something is fundamentally wrong with our institutions and the government for us to be getting food to feed our people from a war-torn country that is at war from a powerful nation like Russia. “There is a systematic decay from government policies and our leaders do not see anything wrong with begging for food to feed 280 million people. How long are we going to continue with this type of handouts of food stamps from other nations?”, he queried.
Oyekoya also pointed out that a lot of Nigerians would want to do farming, but the environment is not conducive for them; where there is no light, security, roads, water, petrol, diesel and others because “Climate change is there that the whole world is battling with, but Nigeria is not finding solutions to the farmers’ problem such as irrigation, farm support, and adequate land with title for farming. He said that the money the government is wasting on the so-called palliative should be properly channeled into buying equipment to farmers instead of giving them to the state governors to be embezzled or changed into dollars”. According to him, “Giving out cash for distribution is a window of opportunity for corruption as the money cannot be accounted for. Some of our leaders suffer from poverty of the mind, hence the accumulation of unnecessary wealth.
“Farmers are been displaced from the north to the south by herdsmen, kidnappers, banditry and even the government itself, like what is happening with my case with other farmers along the Itoikin-Epe axis where the military just took over farms and started fencing us away from our farms and the Lagos State Government that allocated the lands to us have not addressed the issue of military invasion that disrupted our farming business”. Oyekoya, while suggesting solutions to food shortage in the country, advised the government to open the various borders to import food that are necessary like rice and that the government should declare a state of emergency on food crisis. He added that state governments urgently need to channel all their energy and resources on farming to be able to feed their citizens. He suggested that the state governments should allocated more lands for farming and support with modern equipment and that states should established farm settlements with value chains in all the local governments or senatorial districts, and that states like Lagos with rice milling should be allowed to import paddy rice for processing to crash the price.
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