Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has described lack of access to finance as one of the fundamental challenges militating against the growth of the agricultural sector in the country.
He spoke in Lagos as a special guest of honour at a public forum organised by the Institute of Credit Administration (ICA).
The former president who spoke on ‘Agric business and food security: The role of credit,’ said “Agriculture is the way to go and must be the centrepiece of our economy. But lack of credit is seriously hurting the sector.”
Recalling his own experience as a farmer, he said: “One thing that I know is that I’m a debtor. To succeed as a farmer, you need funds. You either accumulate credit or you go to the bank and borrow. You need funds for development. You need funds for agriculture.”
He added: “Agriculture business is very important because food is essential for our daily existence. You can’t have food unless you have agric business.
“Not enough attention is being done to grow agriculture because it is not a very viable or vibrant money-making thing like oil and gas, trading. But agriculture is one thing we have to take very seriously. So you have to put money in it.”
He said government was not doing enough to grow the sector.
His words: “The government has always seen agriculture as a project and once there is a little problem government leaves it. Agriculture must be taken as a business. It must not be taken in silos.
“We must work together. All hands must be on the deck. We are all stakeholders in agric business. If you are not a farmer, processor, produce merchant, at least you are a consumer. So we all must work for the success of agric business.”
Citing the efforts of his own administration to boost agriculture, he said: “Between 2005-2007, we were able to boost cocoa output from 150,000 metric tonnes per annum to 400,000. We did the same thing with cassava from 30million tonnes to 50million metric tonnes.
“All that was done successfully because we took them commodity by commodity; we met with all the stakeholders within the sector whether the farmers, researchers, marketers, processors, we met every quarter within a space of five years and we achieved quite a lot.”
While reiterating the immense benefits of agriculture, Obasanjo said unlike other sectors, agriculture has the potential to employ more.
“We invested about $20billion in the liquefied natural gas sector and it could only employ 250 people at a go. But if you invest just $1billion in agriculture you can employ millions of people. Therefore to succeed in agriculture, we need to put in place short, medium and long term planning.”
The high-point of the occasion was the presentation of an award on the erstwhile president as life honourable patron of the ICA by the Registrar and CEO, Prof Chris Onalo.
