Stakeholders in the agricultural sector have warned President Bola Tinubu to ensure that necessary machinery and monitoring mechanisms are put in place to achieve success in its proposed agric reforms for this year, to avoid his agenda going the way of past failed interventions.

In his nationwide broadcast on January 1, 2024, where he outlined his broadened plans for 2024, the President pledged to accelerate efforts to cultivate 500,000 hectares of farmland nationwide to grow maize, rice, wheat, millet, and other staple crops in order to guarantee a steady supply, security, and affordability of food.

He said: “To ensure constant food supply, security and affordability, we will step up our plan to cultivate 500,000 hectares of farmlands across the country to grow maize, rice, wheat, millet and other staple crops. We launched the dry season farming with 120,000 hectares of land in Jigawa State last November under our National Wheat Development Programme.”

The Managing Director of Bama Farms, Lagos, Prince Wale Oyekoya, who described the initiative as a welcome development that will boost food security, expressed fear that the initiative might turn out to be one of the policy summersaults that affected food production in the country.

“Corruption needs to be tackled before it could work. The people or the ministry to handle the task must be sincere and put the country first in their dealings. Cultivating 500,000 hectares for grains is good as it will reduce food shortages and high cost of these commodities.

“We hope that the political farmers will not hijack the laudable project. Too many external forces such as herdsmen, insurgency and military intervention on farming activities like what’s currently going on at Itoikin-Epe axis, are major problems facing farmers in the country.”

On his part, the Chief Executive Officer, Green Sahara Farms, Sulaiman Dikwa, who said in the last four decades, the country has had numerous programmes from Operation Feed the Nation of Obasanjo, to Green Revolution of Shehu Shagari when the country had national development plans with dams and other infrastructure built, through the regimes of Buhari, Babangida to Obasanjo to date, regretted that the foundation was discarded and numerous agencies were created as cost centres rather than interventions.

“These were the sources to administration cost centres, which opens doors for corruption and nepotism in allocation of resources.

“The recipients and actors of this intervention are local and community-based. They’ll cultivate crops whether they are helped or not, so we need to fix the fundamentals to increase their return per unit of land by engaging in value chain fixing as first step in soil and water management.

“Then, the issue of post harvest handling must be addressed, this will unlock about $2b with further opportunities in energy and fertilisation and niche creation as a naturally grown food to meet current demands for sustainability and climate, whilst at the same time meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially eliminating poverty and food security.”

He advised that the SDGs framework should be the main matrix for evaluation of impact in relationship to the vulnerable, adding that the 500,000 hectares is as good as the model or else “we will be faced with the issue of nutrition and affordability elements of food security.”