Musa Nafinji Yusuf, a lecturer in Agricultural Extension at the Federal University, Wukari, Taraba State, identifies factors responsible for the failure of agricultural and rural development programmes by successive Nigerian governments. He advocates a holistic, integrated, consistent, and people focused approach to overcome the challenges. In Nigeria, rural development has been inextricably tied to agricultural development. A cursory examination of trends in Nigeria’s agricultural and rural development efforts beginning from pre-independence to date depicts a very close relationship between the two. It should be pointed out however, that in spite of their close relationship, agricultural and rural development are by no means synonymous, given that agricultural production is not the only possible activity undertaken by people living in rural areas of Nigeria. In pre-independence Nigeria the colonial government formulated agricultural policy that paid serious attention on the mobilization of rural people to produce export crops like cocoa in the west, oil-palm in the east, rubber in the mid-west and groundnut and cotton in the north. In order to facilitate the ease of transportation of the export crops to Europe to support agro-industries, railways were constructed across the regions by the colonial authorities. The extension system employed by the colonial administration was based on commodity approach with some enforcement component attached, to achieve their goal for massive export crop production. During this period, three agricultural research stations were established in Samaru (1921), Umudike (1923) and Moor plantation (1924) Also, Regional Ministries of Agriculture were established in the East, North and West. At independence (1960) however, agricultural and rural development took another dimension with rural roads construction taking the centre stage. By 1967 the Nigerian civil war had broken and it lasted till 1970. The war ushered in yet another trend in rural development in which case, areas that were affected by the war were reconstructed by the military government of General Yakubu Gowon. Nigeria’s achievements in agricultural and rural development in the 1970s later witnessed a decline by virtue of the discovery of oil. Apparently, the oil-boom encouraged rural-urban drift with an attendant adverse effect on the rural economy of the nation. Nigeria had by this time relegated agriculture to the background and stated expending colossal sums of the oil revenue on food importation. The nation later witnessed a sharp decline in oil revenue due to the oil glut of the 1970s, a development that compelled her to introduced austerity measures with a view to revitalize agricultural and rural development. Whether or not the austerity measures yielded the desired fruits remains a subject of considerable debate. In the year 1973, the National Accelerated Food Production Program (NAFPP) was launched. The program was supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). This program had both research, extension and agro-services components and experts believed that it led to short term increase in crop production. However, lack of government commitment and poor funding led to the death of the program. In 1976 the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) provided the much needed impetus for agricultural and rural development through the establishment of Operation Feed the Nation (OFN) and the River Basin and Rural Development Authorities (RBRDAs). While the OFN was aimed at mobilizing Nigerians to participate in farming activities, the RBRDAs on the other hand has the mandate of undertaking comprehensive development of both surface and underground water resources for increased agricultural production especially, through the development of modern irrigation system. Unfortunately, while the RBRDAs being capital intensive projects suffered the adverse effects of economic depression that eventually led to the privatization of some of them, the OFN on the other hand failed partly because it was directed at the wrong people, neglecting the farmers who occupy a prime place in agricultural production. In 1979 the civilian regime of Alhaji Shehu Shagari launched the Green Revolution (GR) as a replacement for OFN. The aim of the GR was to ensure that Nigeria attains self-sufficiency in food production within five years. The GR depended on the ministry- based extension system and was instrumental to raising mass awareness on the problems of food confronting the nation. Sadly, the GR also failed partly because it presumed that the ministry- based extension system, which was in itself weak could support it (GR). Similarly, the Pilot Agricultural Development Program (PADP) started in 1975 with the establishment of three pilot/enclave ADPs in Funtua (former Kaduna state), Gombe (former Bauchi state) and Gusua ( former Sokoto state). The success recorded by the pilot/enclave ADPs led the FGN to establish six additional enclaves in Ayingba, Lafia, Bida, Ilorin, Ekiti-Akoko and Oyo-North between 1979 and 1982. By 1986, the phase I of the state-wide ADPs had begun while the phase II and III took off in 1989. The ADPs were supported by World Bank loan and counterpart funding from the FGN and the various implementing state governments. Under this arrangement, all agricultural extension programs were unified under each state ADP whiles the Training and Visit (T&V) system of extension as propounded by Benor and Baxter was adopted as a technique for extending agricultural innovations to rural people. As at today, the withdrawal of funding by the World Bank has rendered most, if not all the ADPs comatose as exemplified by serious management problems across the ADPs. Between 1987- 2004 other agricultural and rural development programs were established by successive governments in Nigeria. They include but not limited to the following: Better Life for Rural Women (1987), Nigerian Agricultural Insurance Scheme-NAIS (1987), National Agricultural Extension Research Liaison Service-NAERLS (Reconstituted in 1987 with a national mandate), Rural Banking Program- Peoples’ Bank of Nigeria-PBN (1989) and Community Banks (1990); while the PBN is defunct, some Community Banks are still functional. Others are; Family Support Program-FSP (1994), Family Economic Advancement Program-FEAP (1995-1999 and scrapped in 2000), Small and Medium Industries Development Agency-SMIDA (2000), Nigerian Agricultural, Cooperative and Rural Development Bank-NACRDB (2000), now Agricultural Bank of Nigeria-ABN, National Fadama Development Project-NFDP (1992) project which is being implemented in phases, National Special Program on Food Security-NSPFS (2003) and the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy-NEEDS (2004). In spite of all the agricultural and rural development efforts enumerated above, the realization of their goals has consistently been plagued by a plethora of constraints. For instance, the failure of the nation to fully reap the benefits of the integrated rural development approach adopted by successive governments has been obvious. Experts have blamed this failure on the inability of the nation to simultaneously implement all the components of the integrated (multi- sectoral) approach to rural development that was adopted by Nigeria. Experience has shown that the various sub- sectors of the Nigerian integrated rural development projects. For example, health, education, and agricultural projects were implemented separately, and often times without completing a given project before embarking on another. Another constraint to agricultural and rural development in Nigeria is that of discontinuance of existing programs by in-coming governments. This has evidently led to insignificant progress in the nation’s quest for sustainable agricultural and rural development. Closely related to this constraint is the problem of “mandate overlap.” Mandate overlap has undoubtedly resulted in duplication of efforts and avoidable waste of tax- payer’s money. Endemic corruption among government officials and project contractors as well as over-dependence on international donor agencies have also been identified as serious constraint to agricultural and rural development programs in Nigeria. Over-dependence on donor agencies has made the nation reluctant at fashioning out home-grown agricultural and rural development programs that would adequately address her peculiarities as an independent country. Other serious constraints include; poor extension agent- to- farmer ratio, inadequate motivation and training for the few extension staff as well as inadequate supply of farm inputs and agricultural information to the rural people. From the foregoing analysis everything seems to point to the same inescapable conclusion: the state of agricultural and rural development in Nigeria can still be described as retrogressive and unsatisfactory. In view of these, all hands must be on desk for Nigeria to achieve the desired success in agricultural and rural development. The marginalised rural people must be expeditiously liberated from the vagaries of poverty and its twin problem of insecurity (both social and food) through a well conceived, home-grown agricultural and rural development program(s) that would be truly responsive to local conditions and concerns. Our individual and collective resolve in this direction must be sincere and holistic enough to overcome the constraints already identified. In addition, the location of rural infrastructures should as much as possible be determined by the felt-needs of the rural poor rather than political motives. Furthermore, the rural people should be mobilized and motivated to actively participate in the process of decision-making on issues that affect their progress as a people. Finally, since education has been identified by several scholars as the cornerstone of all forms of rural development; the education of rural people should be prioritized, and the people assisted to develop themselves and their communities with minimum external assistance, without compromising the sustainable management of the natural resources.
Posted on: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 18:06:03 +0000
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