In an effort to ensure food security for the Nigerian citizen, the Federal Government is set to provide 2.4 million households with the COVID-19 stimulus package soon.
A Senior Special Assistant (SSA), to the President on Agriculture, Dr. Andrew Kwasari stated this in an interview with newsmen on Sunday in Abuja. Kwasari was speaking while examining the Federal Government Projects hinged on Nigerian Economic Sustainability Committee (NESC), and the strategy deployed to secure the economy against the effect of the pandemic.
According to the Presidential aide, the stimulus would be provided through the Agric for Food and Jobs Plan (AFJP), under the Agricultural Sector of the Nigeria Economic Sustainability Plan (NESP).
The NESP, a program set up by the Buhari administration since March 2020, is being chaired by Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo together with members from key sectors of the economy to provide succor to the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic to the economy.
Kwasari while speaking said, “The Economic Sustainability Committee needed to be very strategic in utilizing the minimal resources, overall, not only for the agriculture sector.
“So for the Agric Sector, we decided that we will use this strategy to utilize available cash to work with financial institutions, led by the Central Bank of Nigeria.“To see how we can get stimulus packages to about a minimum of 2.4 million households or to fund 2.4 million hectares of land that will be cultivated during this 2020 wet and dry season farming,” he said.
He said the initiative was in an effort to answer questions on, “What must Nigeria do to ensure food sufficiency in the wake of COVID-19?” that the agricultural sub-sector of NESC decided to clearly define and understand the global scenario of the pandemic.
“The Nigerian economy was already disrupted; we had lost a large share of our GDP income which comes from oil. “So with this reduced GDP, even if there is stable food systems supply, Nigeria may not be able to afford importation of food in order to feed over 200 million people.
“Imagine then where we have both global food system disruption in productivity and output and the loss of national income from oil revenue losses. “Then we are in a more dangerous situation,” he stated, adding that Nigeria opted for large scale food production to cushion the effects of COVID-19, due to dwindling resources.
“Nigeria has a plus in terms of a large population that can be channeled into food production, so we capitalized on it to grow food during this 2020 wet season and dry season farming,” he said.
He reiterated that to secure the economy in the situation of impending depression as we currently experience, his committee sees the need to increase its limited resources to cover the larger population of Nigerian citizens.
Meanwhile, the households penciled to benefit from the program are small scale farmers with farmlands ranging from 1 – 5 hectares across the 36 states of the federation as the enumeration has already commenced.
