By Gabriel Ewepu – Abuja

As various sectors of the economy lack dependable data generated over the years, a Member of the House of Representatives, representing Andoni-Opobo/Nkoro Federal Constituency, Hon Awaji-Inombek Abiante, weekend, said, Nigeria do not have reliable data for the agricultural sector.

Abiante spoke on the sidelines of a one-day Non-State Actors (NSAs) Post National Dialogue & Dissemination on Nigeria’s Performance at the 3rd Biennial Review Exercise on the Implementation of the information and capacity for CSOs, Smallholder Women Farmers and Media Comprehensive Africa organised by ActionAid Nigeria (AAN)and ActionAid International(AAI) in Abuja.

He vehemently pointed that Nigerian agricultural sector demands a reliable and sustainable data system that would seamlessly make the sector perform optimally and satisfactorily.

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He said: “If we must plan, budget, and project for anything data is important; you need to know how many farmers you truly have not farmers in the offices not farmers whose farmlands are in their briefcases.

“How many farmers we have, what is their hecrage; how many acres and hectares of what? We need to have this data you have that data you will be able to project, and say I have 20 farmers, what are their requirements, their requirements should also be based on the data that you have generated, what is the volume of fertilizer that they will need, what to be the volume of pesticides they will need?

“What is going to be likely output that they will have if they have output X value, and we’re only able to take off B, the difference between X and B should be what would be left. We are going to preserve, process so that we don’t allow them to waste.”

He also expressed pain over post-harvest losses adversely affecting farmers’ productivity and availability of food for Nigerians.

“If you go to our market, farm, even on the streets, you find out that things that people men and women take as food because they were not preserved and processed end up wasted.

“At the end of the day we are faced with the same problem. Food security, food unavailability, the prices will go very high.

“So what we need now is primary data which is very important. Is not the data that somebody sits in the office and project; we got this from World Bank, where his World Bank?

“These are things that you can do if you have the various communities, farming environment, properly mapped out we have 10 hectares or 100 hectares of cassava, rice, beans then you would know and be able to project. If you don’t have the correct thing, you don’t know who is planting what, you don’t even know what support you are going to give.

“The support you give to rice farmer is definitely going to be different from the support you give a cassava farmer.”

Meanwhile speaking on the CAADP report about Nigeria’s performance, he said: “The CAADP report based on the Maputo Declaration close to 20 years now, I didn’t see the progressive increase in the volume produced? I need to see in the data presentation that after the Maputo Declaration we produced about 5 million tonnes of rice, and others. This will show we are making progress.

“As at 2003, farmers can move to the remotest part of their farms, but as of today don’t we have that as a challenge, where we have progressed if farmers are being killed. I am not sure we have made any progress.”

Vanguard News Nigeria