Policy Sommersault, Bane Of Agric Dev – Expert

A former Director of
Forestry in the Rivers State Ministry of Agriculture, Mr. Fred Nwokocha, has called on the incoming federal government to implement laws that could boost the country’s agricultural sector.
Nwokocha, who spoke to our correspondent on Tuesday, in Port Harcourt, said policy formulation has never been the problem facing the agric sector.
According to him, implementation remained the panacea for a successful outing for the various agricultural policies that past and present governments in the country needed to fast track the processes.
He said though many people believed that relevant laws were lacking to speed the quest to diversify the country’s economy and end the over-dependence on oil, policy implementation still remained the overriding aspect of it.
“There are many laws already in place that have been promulgated over the years that could affect the economy positively in terms of production, but implementation has been the bane,” he said.
He said there was need for a shift in churning out more laws in the agriculture sector adding that policy implementation could make agriculture the mainstay of the economy as it used to be in the past.
The former forestry expert opined that there should be a change in the status-quo to enable agriculture be the pivot of the economy or the economic activities of the nation.
Speaking on the Maputo declaration where all African states were expected to set aside at least 10 to 15 per cent of their annual budget to agriculture, he lamented that the policy was yet to see the light of day.
According to him, till date, the federal government has so far not budgeted more than two per cent annually even as he described the development as insensitivity on the part of the government .