‘Nigeria gets it wrong in agriculture’

What aspect of agric do you train these people on?We do all round management training. The reason is that most of the graduates we have from universities and polytechnics don’t have the practical knowledge of farming. This is a learning point for them. We teach them on integrated farming system. Even if you are into […]

What aspect of agric do you train these people on?
We do all round management training. The reason is that most of the graduates we have from universities and polytechnics don’t have the practical knowledge of farming. This is a learning point for them. We teach them on integrated farming system. Even if you are into poultry, you will build your own feed mill in order to feed your farm. If you have a glut in chicken production, you turn it into processing where you directly supply to restaurants. So it is an all encompassing course. We teach you how to grow, cultivate and harvest 40 crops. At the same time we take about 12 livestock, fishery, quail, snail and others. We teach you practically. No grammar in it. We teach people using Hausa, Yoruba and Ibo for them to assimilate.
What is the minimum qualification required for admission?
No, just know how to speak one of those languages. You don’t need to know how to write. We discovered that we don’t have skilled manpower in Nigeria. We have thousands of agronomy, and fishery students, but many of them cannot even identify fish. Many of them cannot grow fish to commercial level. Anybody could raise fish but now we are talking about commercialisation- how to make farming profitable, how to make farming attractive to the youth, how to make farming rewarding.
What sort of response do you get from participants?
It has been amazing. We are ready to train three people and the three people will bring 500 to us. We have Brigadier-General among our students. The Brigadier-General is running about 10 hectares of integrated farm now which we manage for him. We also have so many rich individuals. We discovered that those who want to take up big time commercial farming are the ones we train here.
Do you have a farm where you demonstrate what you teach them?
Oh yes. Here we have a demonstration farm. We also have the large commercial farm for livestock but we don’t take them there now, we take them step-by-step first so that they don’t get confused. When they are done with the preliminary stages where they can construct their fish ponds, snailery, poultry and others, after two months, we take them on one month training to the commercial farms. We have the large fish farm here in Dawaki, we have the crops cultivation farm at Karshi.
Do you go beyond training?
Yes. We don’t train you and leave you like that, no. That is where Nigeria is getting it wrong in agriculture- you just train people and leave them. The people they trained in agric are not going into agriculture, with some going into fashion. They stunt the growth of agriculture in this country. Government should have a demonstration farm for students. So when they train you in this state, you go to your state to work in the demonstration farm for one year. After working in demonstration farm for one year, they should give you a loan and a land to start your farm. This is how you grow. Agriculture will never grow because people don’t have the platform to grow. Theoretical knowledge people get from the universities is not enough. Syllable for agriculture should be reviewed every year because new technologies are developing every year. That is why we organise new innovation expo every year. Farmers need to be going to see new things, new technologies and new innovations to improve their yields.
Government said they want to produce 750 graduates-agro entrepreneurs a platform like this….
(Cuts in) the federal government is not sincere about that. I will tell you. They said they have registered 10.5 million farmers. Who are these farmers? Let government bring all the farmers and let’s see their farms. They are not farmers. The farmers on the ground are not getting anything. We have over 60 farmers behind Abacha Barracks, at Fadama III, government never visited them. They are my students here. Many of them have gone into banana plantation because we have special breeds of banana plantain and are giving high returns.