Why President Tinubu Must Immediately Declare A State Of Emergency In The Agricultural Sector 

Fellow Nigerians, gentlemen of the Press, ladies and gentlemen.

First of all, I’d like to wish all of us and absolutely every Nigerian, Happy Independence Day.

Regardless of our present challenges, we have good reason to look at the glass as half full rather than half empty.

Indeed, we should be thankful we have not fallen apart and remain the Giant of Africa and pride of the Black Race.

This a joint address by the Tinubu Media Support Group, TMSG in conjunction with BATists Against Inflation on the occasion of the inauguration of the executive committee of the TMSG as to a way forward out of our present and historical economic challenges.

The Tinubu Media Support Group, TMSG, is a group of progressives whose mission is to mobilise Nigerians behind the Renewed Hope Agenda of the President Bola Tinubu administration.

Batists Against Inflation, BAI, is equally a group of progressives which, on its part, seeks to assist the government to reduce inflation, stabilise prices, increase food production, ensure food security, shore up our currency and strengthen our national economy.

The TMSG and BATists Against Inflation both acknowledge the challenges the citizens of our great nation, Nigeria, are currently passing through.

While we must note the fact that they were not caused by the Tinubu administration, we equally acknowledge the fact that it is the duty of the Tinubu administration to tackle them and improve the condition of our citizens.

We therefore urge all our dearest fellow Nigerians to eschew despair, to be positive and to support their government to revamp our economy rather than yielding to negativity and hopelessness.

We have long been brainstorming, looking to coming up with implementable ideas, policies and programmes with which to assist our government for a way out of our present predicament.

We have come to the conclusion that the easiest, quickest and most sustainable way out of the present situation is for our dear President to immediately declare a state of emergency in the agriculture and to thereunder immediately proceed to apply massive amounts of targeted investment in the agricultural sector.

We are not talking of relative pittances such as what are effectively paltry budgetary votes for agriculture across federal, state and local government tiers of government.

What we are calling for is humongous investment in agriculture running into multiple trillions of naira per annum at federal level alone, to be replicated at lower but similarly unprecedented amounts at subnational levels.

The great thing about investment in agriculture is what any real economist should be able to instantaneously appreciate.

It is something called “return on investment”.

Critical and indispensable infrastructural projects such roads, waterworks, ports, airports, etc usually take years, even decades, sometimes, to deliver and it is only then you can begin to reliably assess the return on investment of such massive expenditures.

You can build a huge refinery over five years and end up not even recouping the investment decades thereafter.

Planting crops and rearing animals is a different kettle of fish altogether.

You can plant a crop today and harvest and take to market within as early as just three months.

You can hatch poultry on any given day and start selling mature meat products within a few months.

God deliberately made it so because everyone must eat, nutrition being the number one need of humankind, way ahead of even such other crucial priorities as clothing, shelter education or healthcare.

There is absolutely no part of our country that is not arable or cannot be irrigated – that is how remarkably blessed, favoured and endowed this nation is.

From Sapele to Sokoto; from
Benin to Benue; from Nok to Nsukka, from Badagry to Bama, from Okene to Ogoja, there’s not a single square inch of our country God, in His Divine Providence, has not made it possible to feed his children from.

We must now take the bull by the horns, wrestle it to the ground and, forthwith, proceed to devote a special vote to agriculture amounting to no less than five trillion naira per annum.

We declare that we will never regret it as a nation.

Imagine if absolutely every village in Nigeria had just one tractor that farmers therein could share in cultivating their fields.

That would actually be quite punny for a nation of 200 million plus people – average individual farms in The United States, The United Kingdom or The Netherlands have multiple such farming equipment ranging from tractors to combine harvester to all manner of more modern innovations in agricultural technology.

Imagine the boost the average farmer in Orerokpe would get upon being availed access to a tractor to farm cassava or the bump his counterpart in Daura, Abudu, Ile Ife, Amassoma, Abakaliki, Agatu, Funtua, Langtang, Obudu, Gusau, Uromi, Vandekiya or anywhere else in our lovely country would get from similar empowerment for growing any of the crops, both food and cash categories, we desperately need in this economy.

The irony is that massive investment in agriculture is precisely what a major, indeed the most important plank of our campaign strategy, under the All Progressives Congress, APC, was based on for the presidential election.

Our dear President, Asiwaju Tinubu, was mocked for promising to make food sustainably available to Nigerians, even to the extent of the opposition tagging us BATists as “Agbadorians”.

Well, let’s turn the tables on them by answering the name with pride by providing them the food they are complaining they can’t afford under our government.

What we need now in this country is not endless protests which only end up being hijacked by failed politicians, looters, vandals, insurrectionists, bandits and rascals but a renewed focus on our easiest pathway to rescuing our national economy, which is agriculture.

We don’t need “revolution now”; what we need is a “Renewed Food Revolution” and if anyone can pull it off, it will definitely be President Tinubu.

Let us provide the food and see what the opposition has to say when they begin to eat the food provided by Bola Tinubu’s authentic food revolution as opposed to the fake former one by a farmer who, unlike Asiwaju, has never been able to feed anyone but himself.

Indeed, we call for a declaration of a state of emergency in agriculture and enjoin all Nigerians to support our President to rescue this nation from decades of rot, stagnation and unimaginative leadership.

May God guide and protect President Tinubu.

God bless Nigeria!

Barr. Jesutega Onokpasa,
Chairman, Tinubu Media Support Group, TMSG.

Hon. Sunday Oluwanifemi Okikiola,
Convener, BATists Against Inflation, BAI.