Ibekimi Oriamaja Reports
On Friday, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo assured that the Federal Government will continue to create an enabling environment to encourage more private sector investments in agriculture.
Prof. Osinbajo made the remarks during the formal commissioning of Pandagric Novum Farms, an integrated feed and food manufacturing company in the Panda community of Nasarawa State’s Karu Council Area.
According to a statement issued by Mr. Laolu Akande, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity in the Vice President’s Office, the government would continue in that direction in order to achieve its goals of job creation and economic development.
Major investors in the project include the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) and Signature Agri Investments.
The vice president urged more private sector investments in agriculture, noting that the project’s commissioning was a foretaste of many possibilities and opportunities for investments in agriculture and other sectors throughout the country.
“What you see today confirms that there is opportunity in Nigeria for agricultural investments.” While the government is committed to creating an enabling environment, we will look to the private sector for investments to catalyze sector growth. “We must indeed collaborate to re-define agriculture in Nigeria for the future,” the Vice President stated.
While extending President Muhammadu Buhari’s warm greetings to the people of the state, the Vice President stated that Mr. President “passionately believes in the role of the country’s agriculture sector as a key driver of job creation and economic growth.”
He cited examples in various sub-sectors of the agricultural value chain where the NSIA has invested as part of its key mandates over the last decade.
The Presidential Fertilizer Initiative (PFI), established by President Muhammadu Buhari in 2016 to address the issue of fertilizer cost and availability, is one of these investments.
Prof. Osinbajo rolled out the achievements of the PFI, which was restructured in 2022, adding that the President enlisted NSIA as the project implementing entity.
“Over the course of its five-year run (2017-2021), the program has delivered over 30 million 50kg bags of NPK 20:10:10 fertiliser to Nigerian farmers, resuscitated the fertiliser blending industry, reviving over 60 otherwise dormant plans scattered across the country, created hundreds of thousands of direct and indirect jobs, and enabled the government to save foreign exchange worth over US$100 million through import substitution.”
“Now that the sector has been reactivated, the NSIA’s role in the fertilizer value chain has shifted upstream,” the VP explained.
