The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, has challenged a former Minister of Agriculture, Adamu Bello, to show any positive investment he attracted to the sector under his seven-year reign.
Adesina, who spoke through his Special Assistant on Media, Dr. Olukayode Oyeleye, accused Bello of failing to tell Nigerians the truth about his actual performance.
Bello had, in a widely circulated statement last week, faulted the successes said to have been recoded under Adesina’s tenure, arguing such claims were uncharitable and misplaced as they could not be verified with figures obtained from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
But Oyeleye, in an electronic mail to newsmen in Abuja, said that Adesina’s administration under two years attracted $4 billion of private sector investment in agriculture whereas Bello had no investment to show for his seven years as a minister.
He said: “It will help greatly for Adamu Bello to point to the number of investments generated in seven years, whereas, within two years, under Adesina, Nigeria has attracted US$4 billion in private sector investments in the agricultural sector. Adamu Bello never told Nigerians the truth about his actual performance in office. Let him give details commodity-by-commodity, and let him state where and how this impact was felt”.
Oyeleye, while noting that the 6.50 % performance growth rates referred to by the former minister under his seven years “smacks of some form of cosmetic and fiddled growth statistics, an indication of some tinkering somewhere,”said some critical minds in the Nigerian economy and stakeholders in the sector had publicly commended Adesina’s contribution to the growth of the agricultural sector.
Oyeleye said if a well-known public affairs analyst like Professor Pat Utomi could commend efforts made by the government to block leakages “in farmers’ access to fertilizers, provision of real-time information to farmers through making available handsets to farmers across the country”, it is difficult to understand why Bello continues to vilify the minister for transforming the sector.
He said the minister is content with the fact that those who have benefited from the positive impact of Adesina’s intervention in the sector have come out to defend him.
Noting that the Chairman of Umza Rice and Chairman, Rice Processors Association, Mohammed Abubakar, has publicly acknowledged that Adesina created incentives for seed and fertilizer companies to develop supply chains to reach farmers directly in the country, Oyeleye said Adesina attracted $5billion worth of investments by the private sector into local fertilizer manufacturing.
Oyeleye also commended a frontline media practitioner and Chairman of 3D Global Leadership, Dr Victor Oladokun, for describing Bello’s claim as a pack of lies as Adesina has achieved more in two years than Bello achieved in his 7-year tenure as agriculture minister.
He quoted Oladokun as saying that”Adesina ended the corrupt, crony-driven fertilizer racket that helped serve the interest of the rich and the politically powerful, and turned farmers into paupers. The farmers know better. Their fertilizer was hijacked and ‘shared’ by the elite. So shady was the direct fertilizer procurement system that Nigeria was known to have one of the worst cases of fertilizer corruption in the world. Just ask the millions of farmers who today receive fertilizer directly, without needing middlemen or political cronies.”
