‘We must decide whether our farmland and grazing areas are to be battlegrounds, or they are to return to their role of feeding the nation’

(Being the acceptance remarks by Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu delivered April 24 on occasion of the convocation ceremonies (April 23 to 25) of the FederalUniversity of Agriculture, Makurdi, where he was conferred with a honorary Doctoratedegree.)

MY deep thanks to the esteemed Federal University of Agriculture for awarding me this honorary Doctorate. A special thanks goes to the University Senate and Council.  This is indeed a tremendous honour.

Since being established in 1988, this University has become one of the best tertiary institutions in Nigeria. It continues to impress with the quality education imparted on this campus.

Graduates of this university have gone on to distinguish themselves. This year’s graduating class will surely continue this fine tradition.

You represent the best of who we are and the best of what this nation still can be.

Your years of study were not without their difficulties and challenges. Yet, you overcame whatever roadblocks appeared in your way. Because of your intelligence and perseverance, we celebrate you this day. This university and your families are very proud of you. I am too.

Graduates, the rest of your lives stretches before you. In it, there will be hard times and easy moments. You will feel the excitement of victory but also know the heaviness of setback.

Your destiny is not to fear, but to overcome. For progress does not imply the absence of obstacles. Progress demands the surmounting of them.

This respected institution has equipped you with the educational and ethical tools you need. Now, you must go into the world and apply your knowledge and skills. You do this not only for your own benefit. You do this for the benefit of your communities and our precious nation, Nigeria.

Yes, things may be tough now. But remember we have the power to correct what is wrong, and repair what is broken. We have the ability to grow what is needed to feed all who need to be fed. In your hands, lies the power and ability to defeat the worst and cultivate best of this nation.

We approach a defining moment as a nation. A reckoning of special importance beckons. We must decide whether to give the truest meaning to our national motto “peace and unity” or we allow the agents of destruction and merchants of violence to have their way with us.

Terrible people and strong forces want to break Nigeria’s appointment with its greater destiny. These people have unleashed terror and violent criminality against us. By attacking agricultural players across the nation, they seek not only to ravage the agricultural community, but to visit misery on the rest of the nation through food scarcity and food costs that poor people can simply not afford. In effect, these mean forces seek to impose a food production and distribution crisis on us by disrupting strategically important agricultural areas and activities.

All of this has underscored the importance of the agricultural sector to our collective condition.

The federal government has, thus, devoted itself to improving our nation’s agricultural sector. Important strides have been made. Yet, we have not yet reached the Promised Land. Government, and we, must continue to do more.    

Here, may I offer a few thoughts regarding the agricultural sector and its role in developing the nation.

Agricultural players cannot feed the nation and fight evil actors at the same time. We must decide whether our farmland and grazing areas are to be battlegrounds, or they are to return to their role of feeding the nation.

This is where committed Nigerians of all stripes and vocations must join in peace and unity. Whether city or rural dweller, whether farmer or herder, we must join in common cause against the real enemies that we face: the terrorists and bandits who attempt to pull us apart.

Those who need peace in order to ply their trade must recognize the bigger threat that now confronts them. We can work the differences between farmer and herder. However, there is no way to reconcile either with terror or banditry without forfeiting their livelihoods, if not their very lives.

Thus, first and foremost, good Nigerians must stop fighting each other so that we can present a unified front against the common violent threat.

Second, in the war against terror and criminality, the nation must protect its ability to feed its people. The military must begin to revise their strategies so that agricultural communities are better protected. This will enable higher food production, thereby reducing hunger and poverty.

Even with these changes, we also must do better with food security. We must produce more and be more efficient in bringing the increase to market.

Third, during this moment of food scarcity, we must launch a program to expand production of food staples. The concept of ‘agricultural sustainability’ advocates food production in a way that makes the optimal  use of existing technical capacities by focusing on the most appropriate genotypes of seeds and livestock  for our environment. Here, both state and federal governments must subsidize the restart of agricultural activity interrupted by terror and criminality. These actions will serve to tame food scarcity and price inflation in the short run. 

Fourth, we must improve farm-to-market delivery. Government must invest in improving farm to market transportation networks. This will reduce the amount of wastage and reduce costs by ensuring more food reaches the marketplace and the dinner table. Toward this objective of reducing waste, constructing storage facilities for perishable items in important marketplaces across the country would be prudent.  

Fifth, over the longer run, we must battle the consequences of climate change. We must make better use of water and safeguard this finite resource. We must envision water catchment systems to mitigate the effects of drought-and-flood cycles brought about by climate change. Small-scale irrigation projects using technology and equipment that can be maintained by the local farmer are necessary.

Sixth, development of strong ‘Green Wall’ to slow the encroachment of the desert is urgently needed. Creation of such environmental infrastructure will provide jobs while also halting the dislocation of people that has been at the centre of much of the farmer-herder predicament.

Seventh, we must bolster our strategic grain reserves by modernizing and building additional grain silos.

Eighth, increased productivity through greater mechanised farming will advance food security. We have one of the lowest incidents of mechanized farming in the world. Governments must work with local communities to establish farm cooperatives that will increase mechanization of agricultural production. The cooperatives should be structured in a way to finance more productive farm equipment, which cooperative members can use on a time-share basis.  

Last and most humanely, we must do more to secure the basic hopes and aspirations of the local farmer that he can live more than a life or toil in penury. Let us return to the commodity boards or similar arrangements that guarantee minimum prices, and thus incomes for farmers of strategic crops.

No one is better positioned than you the graduates here today, to contribute to this effort with your dedicated labour and also with even better ideas than the ones I have mentioned.

Many of you will become extension agents and farmers. You have the professional and moral obligation to call forth new practices that make our farms more productive, and our harvests more abundant so that our hunger and hardship become more infrequent.

These things will not come easily but they will come by dint of intelligent labour and patriotic commitment. There are things the farmer must do differently: you must have the conviction to persuade him to change for his own good.

You must also have the courage and wisdom to identify those things government must do differently to bring the desired changes. The things I have outlined today are intended to spark your thinking in bold and imaginative ways. You must now carry it forward.

Final Remarks

As I conclude, I again express my sincere appreciation for the Honorary Doctorate so kindly bestowed upon me by this illustrious university.

Let me leave you with this parting thought: may all of you find great purpose in your life’s work. Some of you will work in agriculture. Some in other fields such as engineering and science. A few may venture into the scariest vocation of them all – politics. Some will become famous. Yet, it is not everyone’s fate to be well known. However, let it be the fate of everyone graduating here today that you be known to always do well.  

Thank You. May God bless you all and may He bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.