Govt Cannot Create Agricultural Transformation- Adesina

The president of Af
rican Development Bank (ADB) Dr Akinwunmi Adesina has noted that government cannot afford to make the desired transformation in agriculture.
The ADB boss in a press statement obtained by The Tide from Agro Nigeria recently, said that it is the private sector that should be charged with the task of transformation.
According to him, the government can only enable the process by making more room for businesses.
He said this could be achieved by putting the right polices and regulations in place  and creating strong institutions and sufficient infrastructure.
“But there is not much that government can do with a reasonable measure of efficiency’, he said.
The former minister of Nigeria’s agriculture sector said this in an article titled.
“Agriculture as a Business: Approaching Agriculture as an investment opportunity”.
According to him, the problem with Nigeria was that the private sector was largely non-existent in agriculture, especially in seeds and fertilizer.
“For 40 years, the federal government has been procuring these inputs and filtering them down through layers and layers of state and local governments until in theory they got to the small holders farmers who needed them. He said data indicated that only 11 per cent of the fertilizer produced by the government got to farmers in the end.
“Since the seeds also rarely got to where they were going, some suppliers started selling the government grain instead.
“Infact, the system existed to serve the rent-seekers attached to do it, not the small holders who were supposed to benefit from it”, he said.