Annual NCA Receives Knock as AFAN Questions FG’s Priorities on Food Production

Gilbert Ekugbe

The All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN) has described this year’s annual National Council on Agriculture (NCA),meetingthat was held between August and September in Plateau State as a waste of time and resources.

A statement that was issued by the Acting Public Relations Officer of AFAN, Mr. Salisu Mukhtar, said that council’s meeting that was held when a significant percentage of Small Holder Farmers (SHFs) across the country were looking forward to harvesting their crops was wrongly timed.

Mukhtar said: “It is not too late to call off this waste of time and resources on the Plateau where it is still raining cats and dogs daily and the threat of flooding is looming.

“The arrant disregard for the crushing shocks to food production in Nigeria by some people appointed to assist Mr. President in the good work he has been doing in the entire agricultural space must be interrogated in the time remaining for this administration otherwise all the gains made will be lost! 

“While we can have compelling reasons to convene the annual NCA in odd times such as now but the case today leaves some of us in complete awe.”  

He noted that the annual NIMET weather forecasts and the annual flood warnings from the National Hydrological Management Agency always come at the right time for the farmers to prepare for the planting season, stressing that the annual NCA this year is being convened in September in Jos, Plateau State, simply and evidently to expend budgetary allocations by the FMARD since it is pretty too late in coming.