It has been predicted by experts that Nigeria’s oil reserves will go dry within the next century, while some others argue it will dry up by the next half century.

It will therefore be safer to assume that our national oil wealth may start dwindling at a point midway between the two extremes, and that is to say that by 2088, 75 years from today, Nigeria may have no oil to export!

It is for this and other key reasons that we, as a nation, must go back to agriculture and relentlessly follow agriculture and agribusiness development and expansion plan for the nation. The need for Nigeria to make a quick and serious turn back to agriculture and agribusiness cannot be over emphasized. Agriculture, the oldest profession of humans, cannot be pushed to the back burner if we will avoid critical hunger, poverty and the restiveness that will follow.

Seriousness with agriculture, may start with value chains, as being implemented by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, but should not end there. It should be made very clear, though happily, that government’s going back to the value chain approach as it was with ground nuts, cotton, cocoa, oil palm, cassava, rubber and the rest, is no new invention. A whole lot more need to be taken along to sustain the present tempo, and bring in the required income and benefits to the Nigerian peoples and the farmers.

We had research institutes for each of these crops: The Cereals Research Institute, Root Crops Research Institute, Oil Palm Research Institute,and even the National Fertilizer Centre, whose job includes the coordination of research on the use of fertilizer on our soils.We seem to be carrying on as if the only research institute in Nigeria is the IITA, Ibadan.There is the CRIN and the National Fertilizer Centre also in Ibadan, but nothing is being done in recent times,at least to the knowledge of Nigerians, on crop variety development and improvement research. For our agriculture to be successful there must be a backupwithrobust and adequate research activities to support it.

The privatization of fertilizer, importation and distribution does not remove the need for fertilizer related research.

One really wonders if there is still anything like the National Fertilizer Technical Committee that has the responsibility to coordinate all fertilizer research findings, and application that is required to meet the expected yield of farmers,while keeping the integrity of the soils. The average fertilizer availability to our farmers today is about 100kg, irrespective of the crops and soil types, and this is a risky practice.

It was the National Fertilizer Technical Committee that recommended the changes in the fertilizer regimes and types for various crops across the whole agro-ecological zones of this country since 1986. Should there be no changes since then? Underutilization of fertilizerundermines produc-tivity which can only be attained and sustained through a complementary research and application of research findings for each crop, soil type, by zone, but research in fertilizer now is completely undermined or ignored.

Imagine how our not-so-poor producers will be, if political leaders were little less selfish, by also making it possible for the small producers to maximize the sweat of their labour. Is there any convincing explanation why governments are still running and managing processing systems, instead of supporting the farmers to manage their systems?

The growing youth apathy towards farming and farm business need to be reversed, and one way will be to find ways to use the prisons farms to get the youth and deportees into gainful employment upon their return. The numerous Okada riding youth could be provided with opportunities within the farm sector rather than use them as area boys.Our leadership should please stop paying lips service to agriculture.There is absolute and urgent need to address the reversal of the drift of young persons from villages to the townships.

Our churches have excelled in the establishment of educational institutions. It is therefore time that the church in Nigeria should also show interest in empowering our teeming youths to embrace agriculture to reduce youth unemployment. All should be geared towards takingthe youths back to the farm and keeping them there as proud farmers. Our prison authorities, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs need to fashion a way to use deportees and those who cannot survive overseas to enlist into gainful farming. A group of young deportees from Libya that arrived in 2010 brought themselves together and are running a large farm in Edo State supported by the State government.

Our political leaders must rethink to re-empower the youth of this country for productivity in agriculture.The Ministry for Niger Delta continues to pour funds into training their youth mostly in only oil-related sectors, ignoring agriculture and agribusiness, as if it is only oil they eat and drink!

The preservation and processing to curb the degree of wastages and the concomitant losses our farmers are currently experiencing should be addressed. Processing depends on funding and availability of funds, and this is where our policy makers need to go beyond rhetorics and cause the banking sector to encourage lending to agriculture and agribusiness.

There has to be a shift in the mentality and psyche of our financial institutions towards encouraging growth in the agriculture sector, to review terms of lending to farming business. We understand that Nigeria aims to be self-sufficient in rice by 2015 after introducing a 100 percent tax on polished rice this year.We cannot claim to be self-sufficient in rice until we are able to produce well over and above 100 percent of our rice import requirements.

Our animal protein production is still dismally below the known national requirement. We surely cannot achieve self-sufficiency in any of these areas by 2015.It will take time, a lot of human efforts and money, and we all know this.No politicking with agriculture please!

Mr.  CLEMENT UDEGBE, a lawyer, wrote from Lagos.