'Push for food supply' - Adesina speaks on how govt should tackle hunger, looting

Nigerian economist, and the President of the African Development Bank (ADB) has shared his ideas on how to tackle the hunger crises in Nigeria.

During an interview with Nairametrics on how to deal with the issue of people looting warehouses in recent weeks, the former Minister of Agriculture stated that the government should continue to supply food to be able to feed the ever-growing population.

He stated: "I am not used to complaining; I’m used to finding solutions. As I speak to you, we have approved $134 million for Nigeria to implement an emergency food production plan. And that is not something we are planning to do, it is what we are already doing. Already, we have supported the cultivation of 118,000 hectares of wheat in Nigeria this season.

"We will do 150,000 hectares of maize production this month. By the rainy season in May and June, we will support Nigeria with 300,000 hectares of rice. We will also do 300,000 hectares of maize, 150,000 hectares of cassava and 50,000 hectares of soybeans. That means just in basic terms, that by the end of this March, Nigeria would get an additional one million metric tons of wheat. By November, we will have an additional four million metric tons of rice, cassava, maize and soybeans. I am saying that because we have to continue to push for more food supply.

"But one thing that I would say is that the government needs to go back to the policy of the electronic wallet system. Remember that when I was a minister, we designed a programme to get seeds and fertilizers to farmers directly via their mobile phones with electronic vouchers. We were able to reach 15 million farmers in four years.

"The whole place was booming with food. So, it is like a patient that is sick, that you prescribe a drug for. But the pharmacy doesn’t have the medicine; the person will always be sick or probably even die. So, at the end of the day, it is not your prescription, it is the access to what they need.

"Access to high-performing yields, high-performing seeds, fertilizers and farm inputs is very critical otherwise you will not be able to do it. So, those are the things that we are doing in Nigeria. In addition to that, we have a programme that we have already implemented called the special agro-industrial processing zones. These are new economic zones we are supporting Nigeria to develop that are dedicated completely to food and agriculture so that they have power, water, roads, infrastructure and food processing facilities. We provided $520 million – AfDB, the Islamic Development Bank and the International Fund for Agricultural Development. It is currently working in eight states and we expect that those things will start hitting the ground by June.

"What they will do is they will change the entire rural economies from what I can call economic misery right now, to new zones of economic prosperity because you turn agriculture into a real business with value chains that can work and add value and create massive amounts of jobs. We are already planning to launch this year in 28 states a program for $1 billion, ourselves and partners that will build 28 more special agro-industrial processing zones in 28 States."

BEB