Imoleayo Oyedeji As the Federal Government rolled out fresh measures to address the prevailing food insecurity in the country, agricultural economists have explained why the previous efforts made to address the food crisis have not yielded the expected results. This came as an investigation by Saturday PUNCH showed that in the last five years, the Federal Government has budgeted and pushed about N2.4tn into the agricultural sector in a bid to reduce the country’s dependence on imports for food provisions.
Recall that on July 26, 2023, Vice President Kashim Shettima said that the Federal Government had mobilised more than $500m (N370bn) to boost agricultural production. He disclosed this while chairing a high-level meeting at the United Nations Food Systems summit in Rome, last year, explaining that the $500m was mobilised through domestic resources, multilateral development banks, international financial institutions and climate funds by leading agro-businesses. Also, while announcing the government’s first set of palliatives a few days later, President Bola Tinubu, in a national broadcast, said the sum of N200bn was also deployed to boost agriculture production.
Most recently, President Tinubu announced the outcomes of the Federal Government review of the accelerated stabilisation and advancement plan, which seeks to inject N2tn into the economy in the next six months. According to the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Mr Wale Edun, in the N2t.