OPINION: Need for coherency, continuity in food system

By Arc Kabir Ibrahim

That Nigeria is going to spend 13b to fight quelea birds, locusts and pests is not provided for in the 2020 budget and therefore unappropriated by the NASS.

For this kind of information to be churned out  to the public is tantamount to gross indiscipline and gross misconduct by any public officer who perpetrated it.

The public domain is awash with consternation as to the basis for this kind of talk by the driver of the Nigerian food system.

The farmers are at a loss when this kind of information comes out especially when they are struggling to access their farms due to insecurity.

For the farmers who are not sure of even being able to produce anything to wake up to the realization that the government is planning to spend this kind of money on a perceived problem even before it rears its head is nebulous.

The question we are asking is how the government came to the decision to expend this collosal sum to protect farm produce whose quantum is indeterminate because its cultivation has not even commenced and there is no veritable data to rely on in forecasting what it will actually amount too.