By Fatima Saka
The Vice President of Nigeria, Yemi Osinbajo, has said that the current challenge of Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) facing the nation could be solved through agriculture with the right political will and hardwork.
Speaking at the State House, Abuja, while receiving a delegation from the Development Agenda for Western Nigeria (DAWN) Commission on Tuesday, Osinbajo stressed that amid tight fiscal revenue generation, especially, in the 36 states of the federation, agriculture could be a significant contributor to government coffers, boosting resource mobilisation.
According to him, all it would take is the hardwork and dedication of all stakeholders in the sector. The vice-president, who spoke after listening to a presentation on the Commission’s framework for sustainable agricultural transformation in the states said, “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.
“There is no question at all that there is far more information today than there was then but someone has to have the will to do it. There is no question at all, that any part of Nigeria, if there is sufficient dedication and hard work, can feed the entire country. There are smaller countries not up to the size of one state in Nigeria that are producing enough and exporting produce to other parts of the world.
“Obviously, what will take us out of the woods and make us relevant in terms of export and even in terms of satisfying local demands is commercial farming.”
He also emphasised on the raises of challenges in developing the agriculture value chain: “There must be a way of perfecting the value chain and ensuring that the value chain actually works.
“Of course, it involves logistics, transportation, credit facility, etc. A lot more attention needs to be paid to how that value chain works. No matter how much you are producing, if you don’t work on the value chain, you will just be wasting a lot of the resources.”
On government’s policy, Osinbajo said: ,“We have been doing a lot of work with agro-export in particular. One of the problems that we are faced with is even with the whole process of exporting. We are addressing the problem, we have had several meetings with agro exporters. It is among the issues that we are trying to pay attention to.”
Also, the Director-General of DAWN, Mr Seye Oyeleye, in buttressing the VP’s points on the efforts made over the years, reported that the commission has developed blueprints for the development of the health and education sectors in the six Southwest states, citing particularly, the revitalisation of cocoa production and the framework for sustainable agricultural transformation in the region, among achievements recorded by the commission in the nine years of its establishment.
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