Nigeria To Revive A Billion Dollar Agricultural Project

Nigeria is set to resuscitate its Green Imperative Programme, that will help improve the agricultural sector as well as boost food supply across the country.

Deputy Chief of Staff to the Vice President, Ibrahim Hadeja, revealed this to State House Correspondents at the end of a meeting with stakeholders in the agricultural sector at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

The Deputy Chief of Staff said the programme, which would be implemented in collaboration with the government of Brazil, is worth $ 1 billion and is the largest in the world.

“It was essentially a meeting of all stakeholders to discuss how we can move forward with a programme called Green Imperative, which is meant to impact in a very monumental way on the nation’s agricultural sector.

“The programme has been in place since 2018 but was not signed off because we had a change in administration at that point. So, we are essentially trying to revive the process especially in the light of the food crisis that is affecting the nation.

“This is the largest food production project in the world; it is almost a billion dollars,” he said.

Shedding more light on the project, he said it involves mechanization, transformation of the livestock sector, capacity building and technology transfer.

“It involves the local assembly and distribution of mechanization implements to the 774 Local Governments across Nigeria, where you will have resource centres that will work on a commercial basis not free, in order to impact on all aspects of agriculture,” he added.

Hadeja also said a combination of lenders including the Dutch Bank, and the Islamic Development Bank would mobilize resources for the project.

Transformation

Minister of Agriculture, Abubakar Kyari, who also spoke to Journalists, noted that the programme will make agriculture more viable in Nigeria as well as boost the economy.

He said: “This programme is meant to revolutionize agriculture in Nigeria from extension services to mechanization, climate smart agriculture and institutionalized agriculture as an economic sector.

“Right now as we all know, agriculture is mostly practiced as a subsistence form of agriculture where you have small-holder farmers producing food primarily for self-sustenance but this is a programme that seeks to set up service centres for mechanization where you are going to have hiring of equipment in terms of tractors, combined harvesters and the like.”

Kyari also revealed that the model is copied from that of Brazil, which he believes will transform Nigeria’s agricultural space.

“Apart from the service centres in all the Local Governments, we are going to set up regional centres that will be the foundation of supplies to all the Local Governments and we believe that this will transform the agricultural space and Brazil has mentioned that was how they also transformed their own agricultural space and I think we have similar set up,” the Agriculture Minister added.

The Minister expressed optimism that the project will help Nigeria’s quest for agricultural development and also make the country a net exporter of food in the near future.