The governorship aspirant in the 2023 Niger state governorship race, Engr Abubakar Garba Ibrahim has hinted that, Nigeria should stop depending on oil that Agriculture is another way of transforming the nation
He said if giving the governorship ticked and win as number one citizen of Niger state he will work assiduously to put agriculture fully working
He said if Netherlands a small country in Europe (it’s about the size of Niger state) with a population of 17.2 million people made $112 billion from the export of Agriculture products alone in 2019. This is more than triple the $34 billion that Nigeria made from crude oil sales in the same year.
The more interesting thing is that with just 1.6 million cows, the Netherlands ranks as the world’s third largest exporter of dairy products and this forms a significant part of the revenue from Agricultural produce.
On the contrary Nigeria has a land mass that is more than ten times the size of Netherlands and over 19 million cows yet we are not food sufficient talkless of being able to make any significant revenue from the export of Agriculture products.
In reality, Nigeria has the capacity to make ten times as much money than we currently make from Oil if we adequately explore our potentials in the agricultural sector, sadly the whole country is fixated on easy oil money because we are too lazy to exploit our other resources and develop them.
In a restructured Nigeria, the north might just have the advantage based on their large arable land and animal husbandry advantage. The question remains if their leaders are ready to work to develop their region instead of being fixated on Oil revenues and taxes generated in other regions of the country.