By Hawa Lawal,(NAN)

Since the nation’s independence in 1960, agriculture had been the mainstay of the nation’s economy, providing the largest chunk of foreign exchange inflow into the country. Moreover, it contributed about 63 per cent to the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to official statistics.

The incomes were derived from the export of major cash crops as rubber, cocoa, palm oil, cashew nuts, groundnut and cotton, among others.

Notwithstanding the low prices that agricultural products suffered at that time, the agriculture sector managed to strive on, continually sustaining the nation’s economy. With the dramatic shift of focus to crude oil exploration and the attendant oil boom of the 1970s, however, agriculture was displaced as the nation’s main foreign exchange earner.

As a consequence, therefore, agriculture’s contribution to the nation’s GDP declined to 34 per cent, just as unemployment began to make an upward movement. Dr Akinwunmi Adeshina, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, decried the decline in the nation’s agricultural sector, lamenting that since 1975, the nation had become a net importer of basic food items.

The Minister said that agricultural productivity had fallen to its lowest ebb, compounding food insecurity, even though there was vast economic potential in the country. “In those good years, Nigeria accounted for over 60 per cent of the global supply of palm oil, 35 per cent of groundnut, 23 per cent of groundnut oil and 25 per cent of cocoa, while farmers from the north and south made money from their sweat.

“Then, the quality of life was good; children went to good schools, the nation was food sufficient but today, that has become history.”

Prince Ubaka, National Secretary, All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN) bemoaned the neglect of the agricultural sector, blaming it mostly on the discovery of crude oil. According to him, the discovery of the crude oil lured many youths away from the farms into the cities in search of white-collar jobs.

Perceptive observers also say that sustenance of the agricultural sector had not been helped by the phenomenal growth of the mining and manufacturing sectors, which also attracted a large work force.

Professor Ayo Gbolohan, an agronomist, lamented that the decline in agriculture had been catastrophic for the country, especially as Nigeria, which once led the world in palm oil production had now become a major importer of vegetable oil since 1976. “Between 1970 and 1982, agricultural production stagnated at less than one per cent annual growth rate at a time when the population growth was between 2.5 to 3.0 per cent per annum.

There was a sharp decline in export crop production, while food production increased only marginally and this led to the augmentation of the domestic food supply through large imports.”

Also sharing perspectives on the nation’s agriculture since independence, Chief Rasheed Gbdamosi, an industrialist and former Minister of Labour and Productivity, said that it had become shameful that much of Nigeria’s food requirements were imported. He also lamented that agricultural raw materials were not in such sufficient quantity as to effectively drive the nation’s agro-allied industry.

“The decline has been so nauseating that the groundnut pyramids of the north, the rubber plantations in the Edo axis, cocoa and kola nuts in the Western areas and other commodities have become things of the past. The decline in agriculture notwithstanding, successive administrations at the federal level, had over the years, initiated various programmes aimed at redressing the drastic decline in the sector.

Agricultural analysts easily point to the Operation Feed the Nation (OFN) programme introduced by the erstwhile military regime of Olusegun Obasanjo in 1976, the Green Revolution programme under Alh. Shehu Shagari and DFFRI under Gen. Ibrahim Babangida. Gbadamosi said that the OFN aimed to increase the number of the nation’s farmers and raise the people’s awareness of the key role agriculture played in an economy.

Observers recall that the fall in crude oil prices in the 1980s, which set the nation’s economy on edge, somehow prompted the Federal Government to begin to rethink the vast potential of agriculture. This inevitably led to the idea of the Green Revolution.

With the benefit of hindsight, analysts say that the degree of success attained by the various programmes at different times, remains a matter for conjecture but suffice it to say that as at date, the nation’s agriculture is still faltering.

The present administration under President Goodluck Jonathan, nonetheless, has reiterated its resolve to restore the nation’s lost glory in agriculture, aside from the increased unpredictability of the world’s crude oil market.

Analysts say that experts’ prediction that the nation’s crude oil could dry up in the next 50 years, has further underscored the necessity for the nation to go back to agriculture as the most dependable means of sustaining the nation’s economy.

As if to reinforce such a prediction, Dr Olushola Lakunle, an economist, said that there had been concerns among stakeholders in the oil and gas industry.