Niger State Governor Mohammed Umar Bago has canvassed the need to turn vast bushes and forests hiding criminals and kidnappers into huge farms to transit the country from just mere food security to sustainable food sovereignty.

Bago, who gave the advice yesterday at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA) in Lagos as a keynote speaker at an event marking the 2025 World Food Day.

He said there must be an investment in land clearing, land preparation and agricultural products value-addition.

The governor said: “When you travel out of this country, you are in a train, you look left, you see cleared land. When you look right, you see cleared land. This is not a fluke. It was deliberately done.

“You talk about insecurity, bandits in the bush. Why should we have bush? You are hungry, you are talking about bush.

“Let’s cut down the bush, make them farms, and our people will have prosperity. Let’s see where the criminals will hide. But you will keep bush, and bush will continue to become bush.”

Bago asserted that he once told the Chief of Defence Staff to come to his state for 100,000 hectares to do Armed Forces Farm.

He said: “I also told the police, come and take another 100,000 hectares of land, where there is insecurity. Bring your armoured tanks and make it a farm, so that all your soldiers will be eating from your farm.

“We cannot continue to have bushes and jungles, and the Boko Haram, and the criminals are hiding there. From Lagos to Ibadan, the amount of bush that is there is scary. Let’s clear it.

“If we want to grow forests, let’s agree that we are going to define the forest and also plant in a way that will not be a place to harbour criminals. So, investment in land clearing and land preparation is very important.”

The governor underscored the need to bridge the gap in Nigeria where the population growth is geometrical (exponential) and food production is arithmetical.

He advised the NIIA to send his suggestion as a policy document to the Federal Government “that investment in mechanised farming and value-chain is sacrosanct and very important”.

According to him, the government must invest in food and seed production, crop value addition and processing centres, claiming that his administration is already leading the way with its mechanized farming and value-addition.

“When you go to our ports, you will see raw materials being exported out of this country. The more we stop it, we will grow our local industries and we will process those things that we can export and we will make more money. If you go to Denmark, they don’t have cocoa.

“They have the largest storage of cocoa in the world and they determine the price of cocoa. That’s what we should do,” he submitted.

The governor lamented that people are planting cocoa in places in Nigeria and they are poor, adding: “Somebody has a storage somewhere in Europe and determines the price of our goods because we have refused to add value. But we love chocolates. We love Milo. We love Ovaltine.

“My state, Niger State and Benue State will produce 50% of the total fruits that are tropical in Nigeria because of where we are by the River Niger and River Benue.” (THE NATION)