Agriculture: The Only Means For Survival In Nigeria Amidst Covid-19 -Ezechukwu

EVANS EKWEM

As the world’s economies are hitting the ground amidst Covid-19 pandemic, Nigeria, a nation that was known to have enjoyed oil boom over the decades is still grabling with debilitating infrastructure and social amenities including food insecurity, which is posing a serious threat to the nation’s socio-economic and socio-political progress of the country.

In the era of economic meltdown, Nigerians are willing to diversify as the oil, which was Nigeria’s major revenue, was dropping to the barest minimum. Nigeria, as a matter of urgency needs to make a paradigm shift from oil boom to Agricultural boom to secure food security of the nation. 

This was expressed by a concerned citizen and a farmer, Chief Vitus Ezechukwu, who called on the Nigerian Government to consider encouraging agriculture in Nigeria as a means of creating jobs, instead of allowing its citizens draining the nation’s treasury through ghost contracts and bogus appointments to politicians that would skeptically serve as conduit pipe to siphon our nation’s revenue and foreign reserves that could have been employed back into Agriculture.

 A well-known farmer, Chief Ezechukwu, from Umuchu in Aguata Local Government Area of Anambra State, in an interview with journalists, called on the Buhari Administration to encourage agricultural entrepreneurs in the country, especially the SouthEast, even as he advocated the return to agriculture was the only way Nigeria as a nation could recover its lost opportunities and gain trust in health of its citizenry amidst Covid-19 pandemic.

He decried the concept of Nigerians playing to the gallery with agriculture, which was formerly the mainstay of Nigeria’s economy before the advent of oil discovery.
Ezechukwu called for the development of major agricultural farms in Nigeria where species of animals could be reared and processed for food consumption and revenues generation. Considering it as the last hope for future generations, he advised the Nigerian youths to shun crime and embrace agriculture, informing that the era of white collar job was over, warning that cyber-crime will devalue their potentials. 

Chief Ezechukwu, who lamented the brazing moral decadence among youths, however, called on the Federal Government to catch our youths young, especially in the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) Programme to train them in mechanized agriculture.