Chairman of Northern Elders Forum, Professor Ango Abdullahi, has said that the present economic recession being experienced in the country started since 1974.
He noted that Nigeria was far behind many countries, not only among the developed nations, but even among the African countries.
Professor Abdullahi, who stated this while delivering keynote address at a National Agricultural Summit and Exhibition in Kaduna Thursday, said the Nigerian economy had always been diversified, but the country was still economically, politically and socially not making the required progress.
While noting that Nigeria began to be poor since the vision of the founding fathers was neglected by their successors, he suggested that the country had to move from national indices to human indices to come out of its current economic recession.
“Nigeria is one of the poorest countries in the world; Nigerians could not afford to earn N500 in a day. We predicted these days that, Nigeria will look back in regret because the leadership has failed Nigeria people,” Ango Abdullahi said.
According to him, Nigeria’s economy was one of the poorest, being the 13th poorest country in the world.
“We need to move away from national indices to human indices of development.
“About 100 milliion Nigerians are living in poverty with a minimum income of $1 a day and an average Nigerian cannot afford N500 a day, especially when the Nigerian government cannot pay the minimum wage of N18,0000.
“Nigeria has no business being poor. Our textiles are dead because we are no longer developing the cultivation of our cotton. If the country wants to industrialize, it must find industries that can be sustained and have their raw materials readily available in the country”, he stated.
He pointed out that the country could come out of its present predicament if there was increase in production and investment in agriculture.
The summit with the theme ‘Towards Economic Diversification: Reinvention and Promotion of Agribusiness is organised by the Arewa Research and Development Project (ARDP), Nigerian Incentive-Based Risk Sharing system for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL), Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN) and Capital Agric.
Earlier, Minister of Water Resources, Engineer Suleiman Adamu, observed that, extensive and all year round irrigated agriculture had become more imperative considering the drastic decline from petroleum export.
“Unfortunately, currently less than 10 per cent of the 3.14million hectares of the potential irrigable land in Nigeria is equipped with facilities for all year round farming, and much of the available irrigation infrastructure requires optimization.
“The draft National Water Bill, National Water Policy and National Irrigation and Drainage Policy were recently approved by the Federal Executive Council and when the bill is passed into law, it will strengthen the legal and regulatory framework for the sector.
“Both the Bill and the irrigation policy also seek to foster improved stakeholder participation and better management of our irrigation infrastructure, including full support for public private partnership”, he said.
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