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Healing Nigeria’s agricultural sector

By Esther Awoniyi
10 June 2016   |   1:37 am
Some feel the Nigerian government has not done enough with regards to research and development in the agricultural sector hence the pesticide issues it is currently facing.

Tomato

Some feel the Nigerian government has not done enough with regards to research and development in the agricultural sector hence the pesticide issues it is currently facing. This is in light of the recent announcement of the outbreak Armyworm, a maize disease, at the same time the country is facing a tomato disease called Tuta Absoluta, surging the price of the commodity over 500 per cent.

“Quite frankly, that the federal government and by inference, the ministry of agriculture have not paid enough attention to research and development, especially regarding our food security – everybody focused, in the past, on procurement – meaning fertiliser procurement, disinfectant procurement but they never really tried to originate their own bio-safety measures,” said Wilma Aguele, CEO of Wilbahi Investment.

“We really need to get Nigerians knee-deep involved in our own ecosystem, researching our own traditional disinfectants, plants, herbs and spices that would help and curtail things that are either originating from us, from our ecosystem or coming in by introduction from other ecosystems around the world,” said Aguele.

Aguele says it’s about time Nigeria takes food security and biosafety issues seriously because everyone on the globe knows the importance of food security while she believes the country only does “lip service”.

“[It’s] a combination of a lack of adequate budget in the past and also lack of personnel taking research and development very seriously we always think, ‘oh well we have the following exchange to buy whatever we need, we never think that we ought to be self-sufficient in things that matter the  most,” she said.

Aguele suggests that research and development be decentralised to the state and local government level because that is where the impact on the farming community is most felt.

“Everything seemed to be centralised in Abuja but sometimes the Abuja-based bureaucrats lose focus on the wider population out there that really needs to use the services and they also spend time holding information that should be out in the public domain.”

Aguele thinks the country should try use traditional means of production and focus on new production methods for tomatoes, net houses, green housing and possibly reintroduce seeds that are high breed organic and completely get rid of the seeds currently being circulated to farmers.

“I think it is time to have our scientists in collaboration with the global best scientists on the tomato front to regenerate new tomato seeds that will jump start the farmers into a new profit level and a new supply and delivery level to the country.”

“But I think we should destroy every other tomato seeds that exist because I think their usefulness is outlived.”

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