The Nigeria Agribusiness Group (NABG) and International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) on Wednesday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to disseminate research solutions to boost agribusiness and food security.
The President of NABG, Emmanuel Ijewere, said the partnership was aimed at improving farmers’ productivity in the agricultural value chains.
Ijewere said that the inputs that IITA would provide would be made available to farmers as NABG would continue to take advice from IITA.
“The essence of the partnership is whatever is good should not be kept in the drawer or in secret, it must be brought out to people to improve their lives.
He said that NABG was sensitising farmers to the research solutions, technology and to also change farmers’ psyche.
He added that the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war was negatively impacting on food importation, particularly wheat.
“A lot has been done as if we were anticipating things like this. Ukraine and Russia’s war, the major effect they will have on wheat in Nigeria.
“As far as wheat is concerned, so much work has gone over the years that wheat we thought over 20 years ago can not be grown in a tropical country, we now have tropical wheat and we now have organisations like Flour Mills already training farmers to do it,” he said.
He said that there was no need to panic as the country was not importing wheat from Ukraine.
“We already know where we import our wheat from in other parts of the world,” he said.
The Head of Station, IITA in Abuja, Prof. Lateef Sanni, said the partnership became imperative because of the current crisis in the world and global recession.
He said that Nigeria`s annual wheat demand of six million metric tonnes was being supported by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) with 8,000 metric tonnes.
Sanni added that IITA over the years had developed modern technologies and practices that could be scaled up.
The Director, Development and Delivery, IITA, Dr Alfred Dixon, expressed confidence in NABG’s capacity to take the nation’s agribusiness to greater heights through the partnership.
“The MoU is to ensure we work with NABG to catalyse scaling of agricultural technologies in Nigeria such that Nigeria can yearly achieve agricultural transformation,” he said.
