THE Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, has lamented the shortage of tractors in Nigeria when compared to farmers’ population and size of farm operations in the country.
The Minister made this known in Abuja, while inaugurating the committees for the implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Federal Government, participating state governments and the China-Africa Machinery Corporation (CAMACO) on agricultural mechanisation system.
CAMACO is a venture funded by the China-African Development Fund (CADFund) as a strategic partnership built and developed between China and Africa, with the purpose of encouraging and supporting Chinese enterprises to invest in Africa.
Ogbeh said, “there are less than 30,000 tractors in Nigeria and we should at least, as at today, have a million. This partnership with CAMACO is an attempt to catch up with our shortfalls in tractors and increase our mechanisation to make it easier for agriculture to take place. Increased mechanisation is even more important now that we are trying to encourage the youths to embrace agriculture. This is a very important programme that has been on the drawing board.”
The programme, designed to increase Nigeria’s stock of tractors and improve on mechanisation through the supply of tractors to be assembled locally, would be implemented in Adamawa, Ebonyi, Jigawa, Katsina, Niger, Sokoto, Taraba and Zamfara states. The partnership would involve credit partnership with farmers to obtain and pay over a period of seven to eight years at a single digit interest rate.
Ogbeh expressed concern about the hardship Nigerians are currently going through but expressed hope that all-year-round agriculture through irrigation and increased mechanisation would put Nigeria’s agricultural output on the path of self-sufficiency. “Coming from China, you know what it takes to feed a large population, you have succeeded. We can succeed here too,” he told the CAMACO delegation. He urged the delegation to consider the climatic conditions of the states in the design of the tractors, noting that in some parts of the country, temperatures could rise to as high as 40 degrees.
He therefore advised the company to take a good look at their engine cooling systems. He added: “Some parts of the North are very dusty, so your air filters must be designed to fit appropriately. You must also build these tractors bearing in mind that we need them to last 15 to 20 years at the very least.”