Shagari calls for food security
Former President Shehu Shagari yesterday in Abuja called for effective food security for the success of the current democratisation process.
Shagari who spoke at the ongoing retreat for PDP candidates for the elections, said: “Agriculture contributes 40 per cent of our gross domestic product (GDP) and employs 70 per cent of our population.”
The ex-president who was the chairman of session on “Agriculture: Food Sufficiency and Export Possibilities”, said the sector held the key to stable polity in the country.
He called on the incoming governments at federal, state and council levels to adequately fund agriculture in order to improve the economy.
The minister of agriculture, Alhaji Adamu Bello, who was the guest lecturer at the occasion, said PDP-led government had done better for agriculture than any other government.
“The ambition of this government is to ensure that by 2010, this country should be a net exporter of agricultural produce, to reverse our former status of an importer of basic food,” he said.
Bello announced that President Olusegun Obasanjo, in December approved the establishment of the Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria, which would be well funded to provide research support to farmers.
He added that the decision of the government to launch the National Special Programme on