Sen. Adamu Blast North-Central Governors Over Negligence of Agricultural Sector

Rabiu Omaku

Senator Abdullahi Adamu has blamed governors of the North-Central zone for the negligence of the agricultural sector in their various states.

The senator representing Nasarawa West Senatorial zone hinted this at the North-Central FCT Farmers Forum and Agricultural Exhibition held in Lafia, the former governor of Nasarawa state blamed governors of the zone for hand in glove in the area of food production.

He identified acute shortage of fertilizer, absence of loan facilities to farmers and amongst others as the nagging issues affecting agricultural development, adding that even if fertilizer are available to the end users ,access to the commodity are late.

Alhaji Garba Attahiru, the Managing Director of Martaba Farms in a paper presented on Issues Affecting Food Security averred that government should beam her searchlight on good varieties of seedlings.

He called on state governments to come up with organic fertilizer as a way of improving food production in the country.

Attahiru also listed availability of Insurance packages; mechanized farming as well to accord impetus on agricultural research, saying what is obtainable in agricultural research is a vast of public fund.

Other nagging areas of interventions according to Alhaji Garba Attahiru include encouraging agricultural shows, given reward to farmers as well evaluation and monitoring which he described as the role of the media in agricultural production.

He identified corruption as a major constraint in agricultural sector, calling for holistic approach by tackling the monster, other area of interest, according to him include planting the right varieties of crop and seedlings for bumper harvest.

A Director in the federal ministry of agriculture, Umar Yusuf Mohammed says the current administration has done a lot in ensuring the improvement of food production in the country, he however buttressed that government has assisted farmers in various ways.