Nigeria can only develop through agriculture with the active involvement of the local government councils, the outgoing President of Association of Local Governments of Nigeria (ALGON), Hon. Ibrahim Karaye, has said.
In a press statement issued in Abuja yesterday, the ALGON President noted that the development of the agricultural sector “is indispensable to national growth because it contributes about 24% of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and about 70% of the population depends on it as a source of livelihood.”
Karaye also said in the last two decades “Nigeria has improved its standing on Global Hunger Index (GHI), by ranking 84 out of 118 counties with a score of 25.5 (IFPRI, 2016).”
The ALGON President who commended his Association for contributing to the development of the grassroots through its various interventions in agriculture, said they can even do more in order to develop the sector.
He said one the goals of ALGON was to help eliminate hunger through initiatives that make small scale farmers move from subsistence farming to commercial agriculture, “it can effectively achieve this through partnership with the private sector.”
According to him, this will result in enhanced security for the farmers, increased and sustainable food supplies and measurable economic growth in developing nations, as stated by the ALGON President.
Karaye, however, observed that “Nigerian agriculture has witnessed insufficient and wastefully expensive costs of procurement, stocking and distribution of agricultural products and presently facing several challenges in agriculture sector.”
He promised that ALGON was committed to addressing “these challenges by adopting a bottom-up approach though an integrated and participatory action plan for the development of LGAs in agriculture and allied sectors known as Comprehensive Local Agriculture Plan (C-LAP).”
