Empowering graduates through agriculture

According to Employment Generation Survey 2009/2010 by the National Bureau of Statistics NBS, over 16 million Nigerians are jobless. The National Planning Commission (NPC) Annual Economic Reports says unemployment rate grew from 21.1 percent in 2010 to 23.9 percent in 2011.  These figures are expected to be higher in 2013. The high rate of unemployment […]

According to Employment Generation Survey 2009/2010 by the National Bureau of Statistics NBS, over 16 million Nigerians are jobless. The National Planning Commission (NPC) Annual Economic Reports says unemployment rate grew from 21.1 percent in 2010 to 23.9 percent in 2011.  These figures are expected to be higher in 2013. The high rate of unemployment is already becoming a pandemic, eating deep into the fabric of the Nigerian society and creating an atmosphere of uncertainty, hopelessness, fear and anxiety.
With more than 110 public and private universities and over 150 polytechnics in Nigeria, the country produces an average of 200,000 graduates (Bachelors and HND) annually. 81 per cent of these graduates do not have access to decent employment. The number keeps rising by the day as new universities and polytechnics including monotechnics make their entry.  
These figures have already compelled NYSC to have three batches A, B and C for enlisting fresh graduates into the National Youth Service scheme. Yet, the growing numbers continue to overstretch them as one school alone mobilized 15,000 graduates, forcing NYSC to report some schools to the National Universities Commission (NUC) and National Board for Technical Education (NBTE).
Never in the history of this country has Nigeria experienced such a huge unemployment problem that threatens the nation’s corporate, social and economic existence. There is mounting fear of increased social vices and insecurity that will hunt the nation as a result of soaring unemployment figures.
Currently over one million applicants jostle for 300 vacant positions in the ongoing recruitment exercise by the Nigerian Immigration Service. This situation recurs any time vacant positions are announced by any government agency or parastatal. The unemployed are in millions while the jobs are in hundreds in some cases, tens. The gap is too wide!
 It is therefore no surprise when people link Boko-Haram, Kidnappings, armed robbery, prostitution, militancy and so on to unemployment and poverty in the country. It is believed that Nigerian leaders have not managed the economy well, leading to systemic corruption and gross flouting of due process in administration.
Agriculture is one vital sector of the economy that has the potential to break down the mountain of problems generated by unemployment in the country. The sector has the key to open and put a lot of money in the pockets of young graduates. The sector does not only have the potential to employ them, but could make them employers of labour in the country.
Dr Patrick Agboma, Chief Operation Officer, Agriculture and Agro-industries Department of the African Development Bank (ADB) during a consultative forum in Abuja recently noted that the agric sector in Nigeria has a lot of opportunities for young Nigerians to explore.  The African Development Bank (ADB) is providing a 36 billion Naira loan facility to the federal government to support her Agricultural Transformation Agenda.
Ogboma said 120,000 jobs will be created in four selected crops processing zones in northern Nigeria through the bank’s Agricultural Transformation Agenda Support Phase I (ATASP-I). Other donor agencies like the world bank, Canadian International Development Agency are also committing huge resources into the sector in a bid to create a vibrant and virile agric sector in Nigeria.
  The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr Akinwumi Adesina said the ministry will create 3.5 million jobs by 2015. But key question remains: how will the federal government make the sector attractive to this teeming young graduates coming out of the nation’s Ivory Towers every year? How will they get soft loans in view of the fact that they may not meet collateral requirements to obtain such facilities?
Like Dr Victor Inyama, Chairman, Cocoa Association of Nigeria said recently in an interview with Daily Trust, the key to unlock the great potentials in that sector rests with the youth. He said the youth don’t want to take up farming because the sector does not attract them. “We must get them to farm; otherwise we will run into big problems.  Many cocoa farms have been abandoned because of old age,” he stressed.
The growing population of Nigeria and of course other countries of the world means that agriculture has the biggest market with goods that must be bought because people do not have enough to eat. This means great potentials abound in the sector. But how will the nation get the unemployed to take up agric as business?
Dr Anthony Ayeke , programme Manager, European Union Delegation to Nigeria asked last week during a Press Conference to mark the World Egg Day in Abuja, “How can we feed 9 billion people with limited world resources? During the next 40 years, the world population is expected to increase by another 3 billion people. It is estimated that already, one billion people are currently underfed and undernourished.” We need to produce more food and the market for agro products exists everywhere.
Professor Buba Yusuf Abubakar, Executive Secretary, Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria said during an Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology in Gombe that agriculture remains a solid foundation on which the economy stands in spite of low productivity, meager income and other challenges that have plagued the sector. “Nigerian agriculture remains a key driver of the economy.”
Already, the sector has employed over 70 percent of Nigerians with majority of them making money in the rural areas, while contributing about 41 percent to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country. The sector has the key to unlock and unleash great potentials that will spur and propel the country’s wheels of development within the next few years if unemployed graduates key into it.
Infrastructure and inputs such as fertiliser, improved seedlings and tractors are key to the agricultural sector.  Stable power supply is very important to the sector. It should be provided more in agrarian communities; and the issue of storage facilities, which lead to a lot of post harvest loses should be addressed. The recent launch in Abuja of the $242.71 million Rural Access Mobility Project by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development along with the World Bank, and French Development Agency is aimed at solving the problem of access roads to farming communities will improve transport infrastructure in the sector. Building farm settlements across the country will attract a lot of graduates into the sector. Water resources should also be harnessed in this direction just like the federal government’s Gurara Irrigation project, in Kagarko Kaduna state. Already, a young Nigerian, Abdurahaman Jere, is making 5 million Naira from the sale of Maize alone from his 59-hectares-farm at the irrigation site every year.
The Ministry of labour and Productivity, through the National Directorate of Employment NDE, has done appreciably well; more graduates should avail themselves of the opportunities.
The ministry of agriculture and rural development as well as states and local government should also think of creating graduate agricultural empowerment schemes to engage the youths and help them create the marketing channels for whatever they produce. Once they make so much money from their animals, crops or vegetables, public service jobs will no longer attract them. In fact we may have people resigning from government jobs to manage their agro allied businesses.
Government should look into implementation of the Maputo Declaration on agriculture in respect to 10 percent budgetary allocation. Like Senator Abdullahi Adamu (Nasarawa north) noted, the current 1.7 percent allocation is grossly inadequate and will make any meaning to agricultural programme a mirage. That sort of budgetary allocation cannot create a desirable impact in the sector no matter how well-designed the programme is.