Kofi Annan, in his capacity as the then, first Black and African Secretary General of the United Nations became acutely alarmed by the visible danger signs of hunger, poverty and diseases among other contending social issues, in this politically debased continent, that has become a classic case of global liability as well as the accursed problems child of the world community, as a deliberate choice by some of its inept leaders, who suffer from prolonged and terminally incurable apathy and endemic inertia for good governance, due to collateral corruption and visioning myopia.
He decided to use the opportunity provided by his new office, to decode the problems, by inaugurating a system that would help him tap on the goodwill and conscience of the global community, which culminated in the establishment of his agriculture salvation platform, called AGRA, which symbolically stands, and operationally defines its identity, as, Alliance for A Green Revolution in Africa.
It is not my intention here, to go on a long narrative, regurgitating the mission, vision and substantive ideological objective that inspired the Ghana born Kofi Annan to establish AGRA, as a revolt against some of the obsolete practices and traditions that have rendered Agriculture and Farming Practices in Africa, particularly Northern Nigeria, as wasteful and profit disincentive occupation. No, that is not entirely my focus.
As a peasant born, poor village lad, used to years of sympathetic but boring observations of the laboriously energy sapping and monotonous drudgery involved in peasant farming in, especially Northern Nigeria, which is the nerve centre for Nigerian agricultural domain, I thought, AGRA should be a veritable catalyst and intervention platform, to domesticate, fuse and develop a new master plan, with a programmed and cost saving agenda, for efficient rebranding of new agric activities and value chains that, the marginalized peasant, rural farmers can be made to drive to new destinations of prosperity?
The irony in Nigeria is that, there’s a serious disparity between intentions and implementations. The real farmers are left unmotivated, short changed and deliberately excluded, as legitimate participants due to policy infringements that favour the politically influential and well-funded peacock farmers.
My take on the changing fortune of agriculture in Nigeria remains irredeemably pessimistic, unless, the system of facilitations of agriculture at the rural and grassroots levels are reviewed.
How can we talk of AGRA and its symbiotic benefits in other countries, when Nigerian farmers cannot not go their farms, especially in the raining season, due to infrastructural deficits and poor road networks, fertilizer and farm inputs scarcity, et al?
We must effect organic changes, by enforcement of new standards that regulate and enforce new changes in Buhari’s Agricultural scheme, which is still operated under the same system and beguiling forces.
This has been a well-established Nigerian tradition and that is why, despite series of organized trips overseas, we are yet to discover the bright tunnels that will lead us to our agricultural destination.
Abddulkarim M. Abdullahi,
Keffi, Nasarawa state
