Vice President Yemi Osinbajo said Tuesday in Abuja that with the right amount of political will and hard work, Nigeria’s agricultural sector can compensate for shortfalls in the country’s Internally Generated Revenues.
This assertion was made by Osinbajo following a presentation by a delegation from the Development Agenda for Western Nigeria Commission, which was on a courtesy visit to the Presidential Villa in Abuja.
Laolu Akande, Senior Special Assistant to the Vice President on Media and Publicity, made the announcement in a statement titled ‘With political will and hard work, agriculture can solve internally generated revenue problems, says Osinbajo’ on Tuesday.
“Agriculture can be the solution to a lot of our IGR needs and a lot of our resource needs; it has been proven so many times that it is possible,” the Vice President said after hearing the Commission’s framework for sustainable agricultural transformation in the states.
Citing agricultural realities from the 1950s and 1960s in regional governments at the time, he stated, “the truth of the matter is that the difference between then and now is political will.” There is no doubt that there is far more information today than there was back then, but someone has to be willing to do it.
There is no doubt that any part of Nigeria, with enough dedication and hard work, can feed the entire country. There are smaller countries that are producing enough and exporting products to other parts of the world that are not the size of one state in Nigeria.”
Osinbajo, who acknowledged the importance of private sector collaboration in agriculture transformation, also emphasized the importance of stakeholders focusing on research and development, noting that the progress made by some countries around the world, particularly in the area of commercial farming, has been dependent on research.
In response to concerns raised about the difficulties in developing the agriculture value chain, he stated, “There must be a way of perfecting the value chain and ensuring that it is sustainable.”
“Of course, logistics, transportation, credit facilities, and so on are all involved.” Much more attention must be paid to how that value chain operates. You will waste a lot of resources no matter how much you produce if you don’t work on the value chain.”
