The Impact of the Youth in Agricultural Development; a Panacea for Economic Stability: Nigerian Youth in Agriculture and their Impediments

Introduction:

Nigerian National Youth Policy (2009) defines youth’s as those between the ages of 18 to 35years. According to National Population Commission (2017) Nigeria was said to have the population of 193.3millions people with the estimated youth population of 31.7% which constitute 61.3millions of the overall population. This is welcome information and so scary, and as in 2018 now, the growth rate of the population is 2.67%, this indicates the rapid growth of population are expected in the year (NPC, 2018). According to World Population Report (2018) Reported; Nigeria’s population was 195.3million. In all this means still youth are domineering in the Nigerian population as the statistics shows. Adesina (2013) former Nigerian Minister of Agriculture and current president of African Development bank said; Agriculture employs 70% of the Nigerian population, by then Nigeria had 112million farmers, to juxtapose the figures above with our standard population of 193.3million (NPC, 2017) Nigerian farmers are about 135milions at different levels of practice and engagements. According to Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (2017) said; over the years youth unemployment accounting for over 70% of the current 23.9% rate of national unemployment, And Nigerian Incentive-Based Risk-Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (2018) said; youth are the successor farming generation and therefore the future of food security in Nigeria. Therefore, youth’s intervention in agriculture would help reduce the problems of unemployment and boost national economic growth also reduce ageing farm population which NIRSAL (2018) believes that; they are less likely to adopt the new technologies needed to sustainably increase agricultural productivity (laggards). Indeed, youth involvement in agricultural activities will help the current administration of President Muhammad Buhari to realize her dream of diversifying the country’s mono-cultural economic base resulting to GDP growth. With youth participation in agricultural activities this dream would come true, Agricultural sector would probably provides almost 40% hopefully, even if it cannot redeliver what is providing before the discovery of oil, 65.7% GDP of National Agricultural sector in 1957 vis-à-vis current nation GDP on agriculture is 24.44% (NBS, 2017). Inkling to the scenario is visible with various laudable effort by way of programs and policies that the current administration gave to agricultural sector in the last two years of the administration, further development confirm by the report of National Hajj Commission (2017) which said that; from northern Nigeria where Islam and Agriculture are predominant in the country, high percentage of pilgrimage in the year are farmers. For Nigeria to realizes her economic potential and ensure stability, agricultural sector must be made attractive for majority of the youth to embrace. But Nigeria’s youths are completely mired by several impediments to actively engage n the sector in spite of the potential therein. Analytical studies on youth and agriculture in Nigeria and their impediments could be viewed on such angle; quantitative, qualitative and other constraints;

1. Quantitative perspective;

Successive governments have made several deliberate efforts purposely targeting youth encouraging them to pertain in agriculture and outnumbered ageing farmer’s population since 1960s by different administrations. In 1965 farm settlement scheme (FSS) was introduce which aims to entice young school leavers to farming as a career. And in 1986 National Directorate of employment (NDE) came to being made robust effort to engage youth in to vocational training including agriculture. Also introduction of community bank in 1990 and people bank of 1989 was part of the effort to gears youth interest and help them sustain in agriculture. Fadama program of 1990 equally aims of engaging youth in to agricultural activities. Beside all these efforts made by governments to increase the number of youth in agriculture by stimulating their interest, the programs ends in futile and the number remained abysmally low.

1. Qualitative perspective;

Quality assurance emphasized the need for quality in everything we do. The quality of Nigerian agricultural practices continues to be punch below its weight by;

1. Rural Youth Involvement in Non-Farm Activities and Migration:

Some empirical studies surveys of Olayiwola (2005) and Echebiri (2005) found that economic push factors (such as the lack of rural credit, unemployment, and rural poverty) are most important; while others suggested that economic pull factors (such as, perception of high wages from urban employment) are dominant. The economic pull factors include the perception of greater job opportunities due to the presence of industries or companies in cities. Economic push factors include poor physical infrastructure and social amenities in the rural areas, search for education and skills acquisition, and the absence of desirable job opportunities. Other factors include a general dislike of village life or expulsion from rural communities resulting from the commitment of an offense or crime. Research reveals that economic factors were the dominant reason for rural youths increased involvement in non-farm activities and migrating to urban areas.

1. Image of Agriculture in Nigerian Youth Population:

To the youth in urban areas most of whom had the opportunity to study including those of privileged ground and perhaps those of middle class and indeed with student of Agriculture themselves consider agriculture as occupation of less privilege people, this is a hazy thinking towards agriculture. Issa F.O (2018) said;

“obviously students of agriculture nowadays have an image of old person with shabby cloth in dry farm land handling an outdated tool as a farmer. So as long as student continue to think this way, they will never know the worth and potentialities in the agricultural sector. It is more worrying to note that most students of agriculture in all the tertiary institutions in Nigeria find themselves doing so not by choice but accidently”

1. Intervention of foreign donor agencies;

WORLD BANK, IFAD, DFID, USAID, FAO, e.t.c such foreign agencies contribute immensely in degrading the quality of agriculture in entire Africa not only Nigeria that’s why Afro-optimists are nudging Africans to beware that projects of foreign donor agencies are not for the Africans and not actually meant for their benefit to develop. Truthfully, is for themselves whom provide it to advance their interest and extension of the first world countries which they represent in third world, why because all the time the projects are only meaningful and reach its zenith when they’re there but as soon as they left everything will collapse and redo to its normal state before and also the process of accessing the funds of the programs, conditionality’s attached are testament to this allusion. Importance of aid in any sector in Africa remained topic of debate for many years globally. Moyo (2009) emphasizes it patriotically when she said;

“Africa needs less aid than more aid because aid in Africa is a problem not a solution,”

She further describes aid in Africa as;

        “addiction”

In the description she said;

“Africa is addicted to aid. For the past sixty years it has been fed aid. Like any addict it needs and depends on its regular fix, funding it hard, if not impossible, to contemplate existence in an aid-less world. In Africa, the West has found its perfect client to deal to”

Furthermore, she asked a critical question;

“Does aid work in Africa?”

Then light candle for Africans to see the darkness of aid and believe it’s a problem indeed she said;

“…..since the 1940s approximately US$ 1 trillion of aid has been transferred from rich countries to Africa, This is nearly US$ 1,000 for every man, woman and child on the planet today…”

While after the so-called second world war most of European countries suffer huge losses crumbled to an extent that they needed aid from anyway to restore their economy in view of this U.S decided to give them aid which all known as Marshall plan aid where U.S disbursed US$ 13 billion among 14countries of Europe within 2years Europe was able to restore it economy. So if aid worked in Europe gave them what they needed why not in Africa? someone may say there is a lot of difference between Europe and Africa, agreed but let retort to that; why in 1960s to 1970s before aid to be dominant in Africa’s quest to achieve growth and sustainability, only 10% of Africans are living in poverty but now as aid become dominant in Africa most countries 80-85% of its citizens’ living in poverty why? Because the simple reason is that the aid industry is only enjoyed by the funders and African elites. kagame (2007) president of Rwanda in his interview with Newtimes Magazine made a comment on Aid in Africa when he said;

“Now, the question comes for our donors and partners having spent so much money, what difference did it make? In the last 50 years, you've spent US$400 billion in aid to Africa. But what is there to show for it? And the donors should ask: what are we doing wrong, or, what are the people we are helping doing wrong? Obviously somebody's not getting something right. Otherwise, you'd have something to show for your money. The donors have also made a lot of mistakes. Many times they have assumed they are the ones who know what countries in Africa need. They want to be the ones to choose where to put this money, to be the ones to run it, without any accountability. In other cases, they have simply associated with the wrong people and money gets lost and end~ up in people's pocket. We should correct that.”

And also Wade (2002) former president of Senegal said;

“I’ve never seen a country develop itself through aid or credit.” countries

1. Other constraints perspective;

There’re so many impediments constraining the youth from venturing in to agriculture and also those who are in it, for example; inadequate credit facility, poor returns to investments, no agricultural insurance, poor basic farming knowledge, insufficient access to tractors and other farm inputs, no ready market, its energy sapping, people perception, insufficient initial capital, having no respect do to age barrier, continuous poor harvest, poor storage facilities, insufficient of land and soil degradation etc.,

Endnote and a way forward:

With youth in agriculture, Nigerian agriculture would be transform and its economy free from shackles of crude oil. Nigeria must recognize the value of youth intervention in agriculture. With youth in agriculture foreign exchange would increase copiously from what is generated through oil and other mineral resources together. Millions of job would be created, food security would be enhanced, peace may be guaranteed, and dependency over crude oil export would be no more reliable. But for that to be achieved the following must be considered;

• Government should examine all the constraints and intervene
• Weaning off against aid from foreign donor agencies.
• Robust public awareness on the value and worth of agriculture and its entire value chain
• Restructuring agricultural curriculum in tertiary institutions.
• Fully equipped long term youths program on agriculture by government and non-governmental organizations.
• Provision of social amenities and other incentives in to rural areas to entice rural youth to agriculture and stop them from migrating to urban areas and adoption of non-agricultural activities.