Last week, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu took a step that would effectively place Nigeria on the path to efficient diversification of the nation’s non-oil exports.

The president allocated the sum of N1 trillion to the 2025 budget of the Federal Ministry of Solid Minerals while at the same time raising the budget allocation of the Bank of Agriculture (BoA) by a princely sum of N1.5 trillion.

Dele Alake, the minister of solid minerals, had proposed the sum of N541.7 billion for the ministry, but architects of the 2025 budget allocated a miserable sum of N9 billion to the ministry’s capital projects. The solid minerals joint committee of the National Assembly rejected the allocation as the minster appealed for more funds.

The National Assembly was sympathetic to the minister’s request. The lawmakers promised to pass the request to the president. Everyone was optimistic but no one expected the bumper harvest that occurred last week.

Overwhelmed by the massive improvement in revenue from the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) which raised tax revenue from N22 trillion to a record N25 trillion, the N1.4 trillion in import duties revenue from the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), and N1.8 trillion from other government agencies, the president instantly raised the budget of the solid minerals ministry by N1 trillion while allocating N1.5 trillion for the recapitalisation of the Bank of Agriculture.

As the minister rightly pointed out during his budget defence before the joint committee of the National Assembly on solid minerals, Nigeria had all along paid lip service to investment in solid minerals exploration.

Records from Standard & Poor show Nigeria trailing in investment in solid minerals exploration in Africa.

Standard & Poor stressed that in 2023, Cote D’Ivoire invested $147 million in solid minerals exploration while DR Congo followed with an impressive $133 million. Nigeria on the other hand invested a miserable sum of $2.3 million in solid minerals exploration.

With what the president has done to the budget of the Ministry of Solid Minerals everyone expects massive improvement in the country’s bid to diversify its non-oil exports and rake in more foreign exchange to its dwindling reserves.

The president’s gesture towards the Bank of Agriculture has drawn thunderous applause from economy watchers. Nigeria is deep in food security crisis with food inflation hovering around 40 per cent.

Nigeria’s food insecurity is escalated by an odd combination of primitive farming methods along with massive deficiency in the food distribution chain.

Nigeria depends on the activities of 70 million peasant farmers for the provision of food for a population of 218 million. The peasant farmers clear the land with cutlasses and till the soil with back-breaking hoes. It takes months of labour by 70 million peasant farmers to produce the quantity of food generated in hours by mechanised farm operators who use tractors and combined harvesters. Nigeria must embrace mechanised farming if it must resolve the calamitous food security crisis plaguing the country.

The federal government has taken a bold step in the direction of tackling the country’s food insecurity with the allocation of N1.5 trillion to the Bank of Agriculture for recapitalisation. It would be used to empower smallholder farmers, stimulate agriculture businesses and boost food exports.

Now that the president has done his bid to fund exploration in solid minerals and recapitalise the Bank of Agriculture, everyone expects operators in the two establishments to work out an accountability mechanism for monitoring spending to avoid wastage.

Blueprint is highly excited by the president’s gesture towards the stimulation of non-oil exports and the recapitalisation of the Bank of Agriculture to tackle food insecurity.

We enjoin the Bank of Agriculture to learn a lesson from the catastrophic failure of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) small farmers’ loan scheme (Anchor Borrowers Programme). CBN spent trillions of naira in the scheme but generated very little returns in terms of food supply.

In the failed scheme, CBN advanced loans to small farmers and directed them to sell the maize and rice they were funded to produce to the apex bank.

However, some of the agric inputs and cash loans got to the embattled farmers very late. Some of those who got them in time collaborated with those who monitored the loans and diverted the money to other projects. They showed other people’s farms to those monitoring the loans.

The trillions of naira sunk into the project ended up producing babies from additional wives rather than the food it was assigned to generate.

We enjoin the Bank of Agriculture to work out transparent ways of monitoring the loans to be advanced to smallholder farmers and ensure that the money is used strictly for food production.

That is the best way to confront Nigeria’s endemic food insecurity which is taking a toll on the nation’s health as malnutrition plagues the country. (Blueprint Editorial)