Decentralises Ministry Into Six Regions' Stops Fertiliser Subsidy, Says It Fuels CorruptionIf the federal government's transformation agenda really goes the way promised, Nigeria may be gradually moving from food insecurity to food surplus. The minister of Agriculture, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, has assured that, indeed, there will be a change within a short time. He underscored his confidence by listing the areas in which he has brought about some intervention, particularly at the institutional level. A major step taken so far is the decentralisation of the ministry into six regions, each to be headed by a director.'I have carried out major institutional changes involving transformational policies and organisational changes in place.' Before now, he said, no one has done this: 'I am decentralising the entire ministry of agriculture. There will be six regional directors to oversee the programmes' and 'implementation will be done with states on the ground and the ministry will monitor what is being done.'At the weekend, the minister told The Guardian of the presidential retreat where 'the private sector said this is the best that can happen to agriculture. We have done a lot of consultation with the people. We are already implementing the programmes' being talked about.The government, through the transformation agenda, looks forward to generating 'over 3.5 million jobs from the rice, cassava, sorghum, cocoa and cotton value chains, with many more jobs to come from other value chains that will be completed soon' stated the miniter. He added that the programme will provide over 300billion Naira (US$ 2 billion) of additional income in the hands of Nigerian farmers.'According to Adesina, the transformation agenda calls for targeted interventions to increase efficiency and profitability along the value-added chains of these crops.On rice, he said, 'our first battle is to make Nigeria self-sufficient in rice production within four years. Currently we import 500,000 MT of brown rice from outside the country. We will reduce this to zero by 2013 and we will shift to domestically produced brown rice. This alone will save us N50 billion currently being spent importing brown rice.'The second bayttle, said the miniter swill focus on cassava. Nigeria is the largest producer of cassava in the world with 34 million MT but contributes zero per cent in terms of value added in global trade. 'We will focus on creating new end uses for cassava'.The minister continued: 'Our third area of battle is sorghum to transform the north east and north west. Currently, work is at an advanced state to release new high-yielding sorghum hybrids in 2012, which will raise the yield of farmers by five times from less than 0.5 ton per hectare (ha) to 2.5 tons per ha'.On maize, the minister, he disclosed that work is going on 'to reach a total of 200,000 farmers in 12 states. Each farmer is being targeted to produce on 3ha of land, thus a total of 600, 000 ha will be covered in the first year and we need a total of 12, 000 metric tons of certified improved seeds for 2012. We envisage that about 40 metric tons of foundation seeds will be harvested from our fields in Mokwa, Zaria, Funtua and Saminaka this month'.Adesina siad, 'Cotton will be given attention 'in the north east and north west,' he said, adding that the 'transformation plans will increase exports seven fold from 20,000 MT to 140,000 MT by 2015, enabling Nigeria to regain its leading position in West Africa. This will be achieved through adoption of new improved varieties of cotton, improvement in quality and revitalisation of the cotton ginneries'.To increase cocoa productivity, he noted, 'we will develop tailored cocoa fertiliser blends to rapidly improve yields from 300kg per ha to 500kg per ha. We will raise new financing from the capital markets to revitalise the cocoa sector. The transformation of the cocoa sector will create 360,000 jobs by 2015'.And on fishery, he said, 'the fish transformation agenda plans to increase annual fish production from the current production of 0.78M MT to 3.0M MT in order to achieve self sufficiency in fish production and supply by the year 2015. This will be achieved through fish farm estate development; fish seeds and feed mill development; fish pen and cage culture development and fish post-harvest management and marketing programmes'.With respect to livestock sub-sector, the minister indicated that 'the livestock transformation programme plans to achieve self sufficiency in meat and livestock production by 2015 through investment in the livestock value chain on the following programmes promoting large scale livestock farming in five geo-ecological zones of comparative; upgrade of local breeds through selective breeding and artificial insemination; expanding hatchery capacity to achieve hatching of 25 million day old chicks, (broilers and layers per week by 2015); expansion of smallholder and peri-urban fattening schemes; control of transboundary animal diseases and increase vaccination coverage from current 35 to 95 per cent by 2015.
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