Mr Ishaq Yahaya, Chairman, Commodity Brokers Association of Nigeria (CBAN), has expressed optimism that the agricultural sector will be repositioned by the Federal Government to take its pride of place.
Yahaya, who said this in an interview on Friday in Abuja, said agriculture was once Nigeria’s mainstay.
He said in spite that the sector failed to match its performance before the oil boom with implementable policies and strong drive, it would bounce back.
He also said Nigeria could take advantage of technology like drones and deployment of agro rangers to tackle the problem of insecurity so that farmers could go to the farm without the fear of attack.
Yahaya called for improvement in the irrigation system to mitigate the effect of flooding and other challenges.
He said “62 years down the line, one would have thought that the sector would continue to lead in its contribution to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
“We know that the oil boom led to less attention on agriculture but with recent attention on the non oil sector, agriculture will take its pride of place in the near future.
“So, if we are able to deploy the right policy, appropriate technology. tackle insecurity among other things, we will take the sector to another level.”
On commodity exchange, the chairman said proper attention should be given to the commodity exchange ecosystem like brokerage and warehousing to move the sector forward.
Agriculture contributed 21.09 per cent to nominal GDP in the first quarter of 2022 according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
NBS further reports that the figure was lower than the rate recorded for the first quarter of 2021 and lower than the fourth quarter of 2021 which recorded 21.42 per cent and 24.17 per cent
