Varsity Don Urges Huge Investments In Agriculture

A lecturer at the Federal University of Agriculture Abeokuta (FUNAAB), Ogun State, Prof. Mufutau Atayese, has called on the federal government to evolve a system that will make indigenous members of the business class in Nigeria to embrace huge investments in agriculture to guarantee food security and environmental sustainability in the country.

With particular reference to what Nigerians are doing in the oil and gas sector, Atayese said the country would be self-sufficient in food production, as well as export staple foods such as rice and others if the necessary federal government‘s agencies would support heavy investments in agriculture for Nigerians.

The professor of crop nutrition stated this on Wednesday while speaking with journalists shortly after delivering the FUNAAB‘s 83rd inaugural lecture that was declared open by the university‘s vice chancellor, Prof. Olusola Kehinde.

Atayese, who lamented the current paradigm shift in the values and virtues of Nigerians  which bordered on craving for quick money, also stressed that such accounted for why nobody is interested in going into agriculture which he said takes „some time, energy and risks before returns on investment could manifest“.

The professor emphasised that if the premium placed by the Nigerian business class towards establishing fuelling stations across the country was channelled towards investment in agriculture, all the hues and cries that ‚there is no rice; rice is expensive‘ and so on by the citizens would have disappeared.

Noting that if all returned to the farm, food items will be cheaper, Atayese explained that the values and virtues of Nigerians in recent years has been about quick money, stressing that „they don‘t want to struggle and this is a national disaster. That is the same thing that happens to our oil.