Doyen of the Accounting profession and former President of Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) Mr Emmanuel Ijewere is backing the President Muhammadu Buhari administration’s efforts to diversify the economy.
Ijewere told The Nation in Lagos that the nation should focus more on agriculture as a major catalyst to the nation’s economic growth.
A co-ordinator of the Nigeria Agricultural Business Group (NABG), a group consisting of major players and investors in agriculture, Ijewere wondered why Nigeria continues to play second fiddle despite having comparative advantage over other countries.
He said Nigeria has the land, market and produce to be the largest agro-economy in Africa.
The renown accountant challenged the government to develop a sustainable policy to stimulate growth of the sector and put in place incentives to encourage youths in agriculture.
He supported moves by the government to import grass seedlings from Brazil, a country he said developed strong competitive advantage in growing fattened cows.
“I will encourage them to go ahead with the moves. I won’t join the fray of people condemning the moves to get the government to patronise other nations that had better and had developed stronger initiatives from which we could copy, after all there was a time a country came to Nigeria to buy our oil palm seedlings and today they are one of the leading nations in oil palm production.”
Speaking on the spate of violence by cattle herdsmen and host farmers across the country over grazing, Ijewere challenged the government to come up with innovative solutions rather than compounding the problem by contemplating a law to forcibly acquire lands for the creation of grazing zones across the country.
He said: “Cattle herdsmen have a right to livelihood, so they go everywhere they could see good foliage to feed their cattle, but the farmers too have a right to live and their farm produce is their entire life’s investment…”