Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture
and Rural Development, Dr. Mohammed Abubakar Tuesday said, the country will have no challenge of food shortage in coming months as being insinuated in various quarters.
The Minister gave this assurance while
responding to questions from joint Committee members of the Senate and House of Representatives.
Members of the Committee also commended effort of the Ministry in supervising the farmers to making sure that there should be no food shortage in the county.
CAPITAL POST reports that the budget defence was jointly organised by Senate and House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture.
Some of the lawmakers in their separate submissions had decried the effect of the flooding in the country this year as having a negative effect on the farmers products.
They further stated that projections had been made that Africa would experience food shortage given the stoppage of grains importations occasioned by Russian-Ukrainian war.
The Minister maintained his position that “food scarcity in the coming years will not be possible going by the effort of the ministry. I can guarantee you by the Grace of God, because we have measures in place”.
Dr. Mohammed said “One of the measure is dry season farming with the support of ministry of Finance and other agencies like AFDB we will intensify on dry season farming next year “.
Mohammed although, said flood was a natural phenomenon that could not be stoped,adding that it could in some situation be used to benefit agricultural production.
He said the ministry was already assessing the flood situation on extent of damage done to farm lands and crops like, rice, maize and the number of farmers affected.
He said the immediate intervention was that the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management was currently distributing grains provided by the agric ministry.
According to him, the ministry has programmes lined up to address issues of flooding of farm produce.
Supporting the farmers to increase crop production, he said that “the ministry was distributing agro inputs every geo- political zones to aids productivity every year.
“We have insurance scheme for farmers who are flood victims, for those under insurance coverage ,we process and pay them, and for those who don’t have insurance coverage we do intervention for them time to time.
He said in line with the directives of President Muhammadu Buhari for the provision of a master plan to mitigate flood, the ministry is collaborating with Ministry of Water Resources and Environment to solve further situation.
According to him, the ministry has gone far in executing 2022 budget, adding that several agric projects and programmes has been awarded for implementation.
“We are improving production of agriculture products in the areas where there is no security challenge to make up the areas that is challenged security wise, security agencies are helping the us in providing adequate security to meet our target”.
“We have big project for tractorisation and it is on going, we have countries where companies have already pledge to invest in agro processing zones,for example the Kuwait firms have already committed 100 million dollars.
The chairman of the Committee Senator Abdullahi Yahaya (APC-Kebbi) said agric ministry must ensure that its budget was specific and focus on programmes to be executed.
He said there was also the need to ensure that preparation of budget entailed collaboration with representatives of the people so as to benefit the people.
The senator regretted that the country of over 200 million people should be given adequate budget that would have great impact on the lives of her citizens, adding that a low budget on agriculture is not helping the country growth.
Abdullahi, however, said the Federal Government in the last four years has done creditably well on releases the fund for execution of the projects in the agric sector and other MDAs, saying that the MDAs had gotten not less than 70 to 80 per cent of their capital release with the help of National Assembly.
