Why school agriculture isn’t practised in some states — Baraka Sani

Can you tell us what the school agriculture programme is all about?It is a programme that is aimed at giving the young ones skills for life, through developing their hidden potentials and, at the same time, making them to see agriculture as a business. This will speed diversification of the Nigerian economy in a lot […]

Can you tell us what the school agriculture programme is all about?
It is a programme that is aimed at giving the young ones skills for life, through developing their hidden potentials and, at the same time, making them to see agriculture as a business. This will speed diversification of the Nigerian economy in a lot of ways. Similarly, we believe that effective implementation of the school agriculture programme would act as catalyst for agricultural development and poverty alleviation, through closing the age gap of existing farmers, diversifying the economy and creating jobs in the rural areas.
Why is the programme limited to few states?
Actually, we are at the pilot stage of the proramme. We took two states, per zone, and in each state, we took six schools, making a total of thirty-six schools. Being a pioneer programme, we want to test it and see where we should align and realign. There is also a need for adequate manpower which is not available for now and we are training those who will train the trainers of the programme. We hope this will enable us have the necessary manpower requirement by the time we spread to all the states. Similarly, the pilot phase of the programme tagged: ‘School Agribusiness Club (SAC)’ is to be established in selected schools from 12 states of the federation, across the six geo-political zones, and each club will comprise 120 students. The programme will also focus on food and vegetable production, horticulture, aquaculture, poultry, apiary, livestock, production, small scale irrigation, nutrition, processing and packaging and entrepreneurial skills for members of the SAC.
How long will the piloting programme take?
We will be evaluating the programme this year. We need to monitor it before we can ascertain the extent to which we will be spreading the programme.
How would you rate the performance of the piloting states?
I can say the piloting states are doing excellent. The students are excited and hopeful. The schools choose the areas that they want to be trained on and we have been doing that all these while and I can authoritatively state here that the programme is going on well.
What impact has the progamme made on the national agricultural development?
Judging from the catch-them-young tendency, the benefit seems higher than when you try to catch them when they are at the topmost level. That is why we are trying to catch them while they are young and also expose them to the various opportunities involved in agricultural practices, through bringing out the hidden potentials in them. You can imagine what good it will do to a nation socially, economically and morally when its youths forget about the white collar jobs and embrace farming as a business. This will, no doubt, improve the national and individual economic standards and reduce dependence on the oil sector. The beauty of it is that this school agriculture is unique to Nigeria because I haven’t seen any country doing same. Moreover, we would want this programme to be gradually extended to the African Union (AU). For instance, when you talk about poverty at the local government level, there is the need to go back and trace what has been happening to the local government funds and in a situation where these funds are not adequately appropriated, there is definitely going to be a problem.
Is this programme adequately funded?
We are adequately funded. The programme is not an expensive one. That is why we resolved to use the existing institutions in getting what we want.  What we do is to help them (students) build their capacity through which they earn some allowances. The programme does not employ, it uses existing bodies and we are into partnership with international donor agencies, like the DFID and GEMS, which assist us in some aspects of the programme.