Omodele Adigun
The Managing Director/Chief Executive of Heritage Bank Limited, Mr. Ifie Sekibo, has called for innovation in the agricultural sector to maximise its contributions to the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Sekibo, who made the call while speaking to a group of investors, stressed that innovation was necessary to tackle the challenges to productivity in the agricultural sector.
Speaking on the challenges and potential of Nigeria’s agricultural sector, he said, “statistically, we are about 198 million people as a nation, though we believe we are about 210 million, GDP growth 1.5 per cent, before recession, we are doing about 6 per cent and we are at 11.28 per cent inflation, but still hoping it comes down.
Agriculture is 22.86 per cent, industry 23.18 per cent and services at 53.97 per cent. Essentially, we will say our economy is driven by services.
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“Nigeria has a very large market, plenty labour force, plenty of waterways because almost every part of Nigeria has waterways and enough land to feed ourselves and nearly half the world because we truly have a land which is fertile for agriculture. We have only utilised 40 per cent of which we waste about 70 per cent of the land.
“For rice, Nigeria should be producing about 6.3 metric tonnes and one begins to wonder why we are poor as a nation if we have such opportunities. Instead, we are doing about 2.3 metric tonnes and you can see the gap of about four million metric tonnes that we could have produced but we are importing.
That is a negative for our economy. A lot of other gaps in the agricultural sector shows that we have a lot of room for investments. You will realise that every state of this federation and every geo-political zone has a lot to offer.
The North-West and North-East are a hub for agriculture only if we do the right thing and maximise the opportunities. We can feed the world in the South only if we maximise the opportunities that abound in the zone.
“So why are we not making progress as a nation especially in the areas of agriculture? They are due to some challenges, which include our import supplies, production, processing and basically trade which are components of agriculture.
“The vulnerability shocks we have out there can be dealt with if we put in place innovations platform, strategies and the likely outcomes. These are essentially what we need to do.”
If we can achieve some of these innovations in agriculture, we will turn our country around.”
