22/09/2011 (The Sun Daily) - The National Economic Management Team (EMT) recently announced plans for an agricultural programme that is expected to create 3.5 million jobs in four years. Tagged Agricultural Transformation Action Plan (ATAP), the initiative will focus on five crops – rice, cassava, sorghum, cocoa and cotton. Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina, told journalists in Abuja that the programme will inject N300 billion ($2 billion) additional income into the hands of Nigerian farmers, and N350 billion ($2.2 billion) into the economy through sufficiency in rice production.

We welcome this plan. It is, undoubtedly, a product of good thinking in the effort to transform the Nigerian economy and improve food security. The programme, however, is apparently a variant of past agricultural programmes such as Operation Feed the Nation (OFN) and Green Revolution, which were heralded with much fanfare but failed to achieve their objective of massive agricultural production and sufficiency in food production.

The challenge before the EMT, therefore, is to ensure that ATAP does not fall into the category of failed and abandoned programmes in the country. This team will need to rise above public cynicism borne out of disappointments over failure of similar plans in the past, and do all that is needful to transform the national economic landscape with this ambitious plan.

If the team succeeds in delivering this laudable project, it will not only improve food sufficiency and create badly needed jobs, it will be a welcome diversification of the mono-product base of the economy. The over-dependence of Nigeria on oil exports as main source of national revenue has been an embarrassment over the years. So also, the failure to maximize our agricultural potentials despite availability of vast arable land and human resources, with massive unemployment put at 40 per cent for the youth segment of the population.

We need to focus on how to derive maximum benefits from non-oil sectors of the economy. Nigeria, in times past, earned the bulk of her national revenue from production and export of groundnuts, palm oil, cocoa and rubber. But, with the discovery of oil in commercial quantities, we neglected food production and became a net importer of food products. Today, we commit billions of naira to importation of food such as rice.

We did not invest in mechanized farming. We failed to open up rural roads to facilitate evacuation of farm products. Genuine farmers lacked financial and technical support, as we did not invest in processing and preservation of agricultural products. The EMT is, therefore, on the right track with ATAP. The crops selected for the project are strategic as they have great relevance for Nigerians. The president has already promised that Nigerian will stop importation of rice within three years.

This plan offers fresh hope that Nigeria can truly meet her food requirements, and reduce poverty. Our expectation is that this is not false hope. Let the managers of the programme learn from factors such as human failings and the inability to appreciate the need to develop agriculture for increased food production and export that led to the collapse of similar projects in the past.

The economic management team deserves encouragement and support of all Nigerians on this plan because it is in the national interest. Nigeria needs food sufficiency because it is important to national security. We must, therefore, harness every human and national resource required to make ATAP a success.

The ETM, however, needs to enlighten the nation more on the process through which it intends to actualise this plan. It has only revealed the goals. It has not revealed a detailed action plan on how it intends to achieve the objectives. There are several questions begging for answers. Will the programme, for intance, be implemented by federal, state or local government agencies, or the private sector? Has government accessed the land to be used for the projects?

How will the money earmarked for private investors get to them to ensure that it does not suffer the fate of similar special intervention funds that ended up in the bank accounts of briefcase farmers? What is the programme for bridging the infrastructure deficit especially in the area of rural roads and processing facilities? What is the package of incentives for farmers? Nigeria, in the past, had vast crop plantations, marketing boards and other agencies to promote agricultural production.

Will there be a return to these?
Nigerians need more information on these to inspire confidence in the new plan. Let everything necessary be done to ensure ATAP does not go the way of past failed agricultural programmes.