FG, distribute the tractors now

Almost four months after President Bola Ahmed Tinubu commissioned with fanfare, a huge complement of various agricultural equipment which were intended for immediate distribution across the country, they may have been abandoned at the premises of the National Agricultural Seed Council (NASC) in Abuja, the commissioning location. Although there are no official details of their […]

Almost four months after President Bola Ahmed Tinubu commissioned with fanfare, a huge complement of various agricultural equipment which were intended for immediate distribution across the country, they may have been abandoned at the premises of the National Agricultural Seed Council (NASC) in Abuja, the commissioning location. Although there are no official details of their eventual cost, estimates put their price at about N50 billion. The federal government had acquired them under the auspices of the Renewed Hope Agricultural Mechanisation Programme, and comprised a total of 9,022 items consisting of  2,000 tractors along with 2,000 disc ploughs and harrows, 1, 000 disc ridgers, 1,200 tractor trailers, 500 seed drills, 300 boom sprayers,10 harvesters and 12 mobile workshop vehicles.   50 industrial grade land preparation bulldozers, 12 fully equipped mobile workshops, and other specialized farm equipment.

At the commissioning, President Bola Tinubu described their procurement as his administration’s effort not only to attain food security for Nigeria, but also to establish “Nigeria as a global agricultural power house”.

The Minister of State for Agriculture, Senator Abdullahi Sabi explained that the tractors will enhance the quantum improvement in mechanisation of the country’s agriculture from 0.27 horsepower per hectare, to 2.5 horsepower per hectare. Other expected dividends from the acquisition exercise are the cultivation of over 550,000 hectares of farmland, production of over 2 million tonnes of food and creation of over 60,000 jobs.

However, noble as these expectations may be, they are at best, stalled as the items seemed abandoned in breach of their intended purpose. While the various states may have been expecting to take delivery of their consignments, the officials in charge of the distribution may be stuck in bureaucratic bottle necks, as indication point to  possible  lack of final authorization from ‘above’. Given that the president had publicly commissioned them for use by Nigerians, their deployment should have been a foregone conclusion, leaving any delay in their distribution unacceptable.

 This situation signposts a possible significant disconnect between the vision, commitment and direction of the Renewed Hope Agenda of the administration, as well as the respective officials in the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, whose responsibility it is to ensure the prompt distribution of the equipment to out farmers. 

Nigeria’s agricultural production has among various challenges the handicap of  seasonality and low level of mechanization of the various links in the value chain which comprises the complement of activities such as planning, production and processing of crops as well as livestock, and marketing.  Currently, much of the tasks in the sector are manual and back breaking. Hence, the imperative of improved mechanisation to drive its development.

The critical import of these equipment derives from the fact that they are designated for land preparation, which is the starting point of the value chain in agricultural production. This condition more than any other, accentuates the manifest drawback which the abandonment of the equipment inflicts the country with. 

It is in this context that Daily Trust believes that any delay in distribution of the equipment is in variance with the nation’s aspirations towards improvements in agriculture.

Another context that makes the delay in distribution of the equipment unacceptable is that many of our farmers lacked the financial ability to purchase such equipment and have been looking forward to such a good gesture from the government.

We feel that beyond the foregoing, the situation mirrors a regular trend in the nation’s culture of acquisition of imported, sophisticated equipment without well thought out deployment protocols for such. This situation manifests in many cases across the nation’s public service and at all tiers of governance, and in a manner that depicts placing the proverbial cart before the horse.

What was expected was that adequate preparation for such acquisitions including need analysis, feasibility studies and clearly outlined implementation protocols. Hence the plight of the abandoned agricultural equipment under consideration, may as well be a typical case of  lack of completion timeline-gaps, as is now common place in government programmes and projects.

Daily Trust calls for the immediate distribution of the equipment to designated locations across the country, ahead of the 2026 planting season since the 2025 span has lapsed.

 Besides, the acquisition of these equipment should not foreclose the need to press further with the drive towards full mechanisation of the country’s agriculture. But optimal levels of mechanization of Nigeria’s agriculture cannot be achieved with dependence on imported equipment. Hence the need for rapid development of local content in that regard.