A PAPER PRESENTED AT THE 24TH
CONFERENCE OF THE ASSOCIATION OF
VICE-CHANCELLORS OF NIGERIAN
UNIVERSITIES 2009
JUNE 1 – 4, 2009
AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF ILORIN
BY
PROFESSOR D. V. UZA
VICE-CHANCELLOR, UNIVERSITY
OF AGRICULTURE, MAKURDI
“FOOD SECURITY EXISTS when all people, at all
times, have physical and economic access to
sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet
their dietary needs and food preferences for an
active and healthy lifestyle.”
Conversely, food insecurity situation results
principally from inability to have access to food
in quantity and quality at an affordable price
when needed in the various utilization or
consumption forms.
The ‘catch’ words as underlined above
interplay in various forms to generate degrees
of food insecurity.
“Access” probably accounts for the
highest variability in the patterns of
food availability in the agricultural
value chain.
The starting point in the chain is
PRODUCTION that generates the
quantitative outputs into the storage,
processing, marketing and industrial
components (Fig.1).
PRODUCTION
MARKETING
INDUSTRIES
STORAGE
PROCESSING
Fig. 1. Agricultural Value Chain for Crops, Livestock and Fisheries.
Source: Uza, D.V. (2008).
Key:
= main value chain
---
---
= sub value chain involving agric-dependent industries.
Where the necessary supportive factors
of production are not sufficiently
accessible in forms and amounts and
on timely basis, the production
component of the chain diminishes to
levels that cannot sustain the other
components.
The fundamental problem is therefore
to maintain a sustainable agricultural
production system.
This has remained illusive due to
several factors that block the
productivity pathways among which
This category of farmers appears to be most vulnerable
when issues of food insecurity are addressed. Their
agricultural activities are often characterized by:

ageing farming population

poor technology-base in production, protection,
processing and storage and compounded by poor
marketing

Lack of rural infrastructures is further compounded by
lack of access to agro-support services due principally to
low capital-base

In the overall, the quantum output per unit time cannot
equilibrate with the supplies needed to sustain the
agriculture chain and therefore poses serious
implications on food security.
Critical among these are:
 Climate/weather variability/changes resulting in
various forms of natural disasters such as
floods, drought, erosion, land degradation,
unprecedented
build up of pest and disease
complexes in agricultural systems.
 Unstable social and political environment
characterized by poor governance systems, civil
strife, social vices as evidenced from impact of
HIV/AIDS.
 Poor to non availability of good quality seeds
and
parent stock.
 Weak research-base for generating forms of
improved seeds and parent stock on sustained
basis resulting in high level of recycling of
produce from the previous seasons.
 Seed industry supplies unable to cope with
demands.
 Genetic improvements not assured on
sustained
basis especially as research
oriented interventions
(e.g Biotechnology) are
not sufficiently empowered.
Food insecurity creeps in due to inability to
meet the quantity actually needed to sustain
livelihood. Quality refers to the natural
qualitative attribute of the food commodities
in satisfying basic nutritional requirements.
Preferences to low quality food though often
tied to food habits are also attributed to
inability to afford the combined quantities of
other food items for a qualitatively balanced
diet.
The critical controlling or limiting factors to
all the above are related to PRICES.
Vulnerability to rising food prices is largely
based on how much food is bought as a
share of expenditure.
All available information confirm that high
food prices have a disproportionate impact
on the poor.
This category of the populace spends at least
60-70% of their income on food.
Consequences are that as food prices
increase
the most nutritional foods are cut out from their
diets to save money.
negative nutritional and health outcomes come in
play.
poor people begin to sell their assets to buy food
and enter into debts regimes.
Malnourishment sets in and could lead to poor
labour output.
Some would take the option of engaging in social
vices as coping strategies.
 Progressive rise in variable costs of on-farm
activities, such as land preparation, fertilizer use
etc. that result in commodity price increase in
order to achieve any meaningful marginal
returns.
 Persistent high cost of oil has implications on
transportation costs that create drastic
differences between farm gate prices and market
prices.
 Processing industries that depend on oil would
increase the prices of outputs in order to remain
afloat.
are:
Recently, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and
Water Resources has developed a National Food
Security Programme whose major Policy Thrusts
1)
Import Substitution for rice, sugar and wheat.
2)
Substantial food security aimed at enhanced food
production and provision of gainful
employment.
3)
4)
Promotion of Modern Agricultural Practices and
Agro- Processing.
Natural Resources Conservation with emphasis on
irrigation farming system.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Strategies have also been
developed in the short term,
medium term and long term to
address issues of:
Production
Storage
Processing
Marketing
Research and Development, etc.
3.1 The Roles of Nigerian University Education.
(i) Teaching: the imparting of knowledge.
(ii) Research: the pursuit of knowledge.
(iii) Dissemination: contribution to national and
international dialogue.
(iv) Service orientation in community service
and professional training of high level
and
intermediate manpower.
(v)
The University would be seen to be housing a
critical mass of scientists and experts in all
fields
of human endeavour and therefore
should be
well- placed to take leadership on
issues of
national concern as they have
specialist
capacities to develop solutions to
national problems.
(vi) Such critical mass of “Problem – Solvers”
exists
and is all readily available from the
various Nigerian Universities.
(vii) The capacity to deal with the heterogeneous
nature of food insecurity complexes is mostly
domiciled in the Universities and the
knowledge
base needs to be harnessed. This
has not been done leading to major missing
links in the quest to overcome
hunger
and
poverty.
3.2.1 Pre-requisites

The Universities should as a prerequisite be
fully integrated into the mainstream of
national
development and intervention
programmes.
The Government on its own part should visibly
demonstrate its due recognition of the
relevance of the Universities (as a
system) as
an important tool for
national development.
With these scenarios, higher opportunities
would present themselves for optimal
utilization
of the expertise in the
University system to
tackle such
issues as food insecurity.

In order for the Universities to
comprehensively
exert their roles in national
agricultural and related
programmes, there is
the need for a proper
characterization and
documentation of the
capacity profiles
across the relevant disciplines.

As a follow up from above, there would be
the
need to establish a common forum for
groups with
similar capacity characters to
interact so as to
assure a highly focused
team approach in
addressing any national
programme as in the case of National Food
Security Programme. The establishment of Inter
University Consultative
Group (IUCG) along
defined discipline programme
lines is being
suggested. This would facilitate the
development of networking activities among
Nigerian Universities.
(i) Repositioning the Universities of Agriculture
The Universities of Agriculture (UAs) were established
by the Federal Government of Nigeria as part of the
Government’s efforts to rapidly attain national food
selfreliance and sufficiency through scientific
transformation of the Nigerian agriculture. The
Universities
are (i) The University of Agriculture,
Makurdi (UAM) Benue
State, (ii) University of
Agriculture, Abeokuta (UNAAB), Abeokuta, Ogun State and
(iii) Michael Okpara University of
Agriculture
Umudike (MOUAU), Umudike, Abia State.


The Universities were established under Decree 48 of
1992
and domiciled in the Federal Ministry of
Agriculture for the
full compliment of funding of
their programmes. That Decree has not been repealed
and there have been no legislative backing for the
movement of the UAs to Federal
Ministry of
Education.

As elsewhere in the entire World where the
success stories of the UAs in transforming
agricultural systems are recorded, the funding
arrangements remain the
sole responsibility of
the Agricultural Ministries while
the quality
assurance components remain the responsibility of
education sector.

The movement of the UAs from the Federal
Ministry of
Agriculture and Water Resources
(FMAWR) has
removed them from the mainstream
of agricultural development in Nigeria. The UAs
therefore need to be repositioned along the line of
the purpose of their
establishment. While the
FMAWR assumes full responsibilities of intervention
funding to UAs on
agricultural research and
extension activities, the
National Universities
Commission (NUC) retains its role of quality
assurance. Research and extension interests
and
priorities should be given as tasks to UAs with
strong financial backing by the Ministry.
to
Each University should be able to utilize its internal
capacity to address food insecurity problems peculiar
its environment. Some vital areas are:
(a) Programmes on Youth Activities
Institutional arrangements for the development of a
“Successor Farmers” programme.
Young Farmers Clubs
Students Cooperative Farms
Entrepreneurship skill development .
On both short and long term, these programmes
continually generate and maintain the interest of the
youth in agriculture and over time would remove the
“ageing farming population” syndrome. They would also
assure human resource capacity to secure the
agricultural industry and thus reduce food insecurity.
(b)
Harnessing Institutional Potentials in
Effective Maintenance of the National
Agricultural Value Chain.
The potentials could be harnessed in the
following areas:
Research and Development
 Development of innovative research agenda which
can be rapidly implemented at the grassroot levels
(villages and
communities) in order to improve
output and overall farm
productivity.
 Development of innovative research programmes
with
sharpened focus on crop yield improvements,
transformations of production and post production
systems, reducing post-harvest losses, sustainable
use of land and water, preventing environmental
degradation
and research into adaptation to
climate change.
 Development of innovative research on low external
inputs in agricultural production, processing and
storage systems. Such research would generate
technologies that will lead to production of more
food with fewer
inputs and resources and build
resilience into the soils
and ecosystems.
 Development of modern technologies for the
restoration
of soil fertility from renewable natural
resources.
 Funding of Agricultural Research to promote food
security be undertaken by the Federal Ministry of
Agriculture and
Water Resources to relevant
Universities as is now being done to Agricultural
Research Institutes and from the
industries
 Universities must demonstrate capacity to be
problem
solvers in agriculture.
(c) Services from Institutional Centres of Excellence
Use of Biotechnology: Genetic Engineering to improve or
modify plants, animals and microorganisms for
herbicide, insect and virus tolerance in plants and leaner
meat status, transplant organs and disease resistance in
animals.
The population of Nigeria is presently 140 million while
its annual agricultural growth rate is about 6%.
In order to allow agriculture to grow by double digits,
traditional agricultural practices must give way to
modern tools such as the use of Biotechnology for
production of genetic modified organisms (GMO).
Nigeria needs to put in place a Biotechnology policy and
set up national Biotechnology Institutions. Nigeria has
signed the Cartagene protocol on biosafety in 2001.
A biosafety bill was drafted in 2006 and is before the
National Assembly.
If the bill is passed, Nigeria will join other African
nations, such as Burkina Faso, Eqypt and South Africa in
cultivating GMO crops.
The National Assembly is called upon to consider and
pass the draft biosafety bill without further delay.
 Adoption of Villages for purpose of
openness
in the process of participatory
technology development and application
involving village level farmers.
 Production and distribution of certified
seeds and parent stock.
Partnership arrangements with State
Governments
on
development
programmes.

(d) Cooperative Extension Services

Development of modern and highly
effective
modes of dissemination of
improved
technologies in production,
processing and
storage.

Development of training programmes to
build
capacity of stakeholders in
agricultural systems.
(e)
Direct Participation of Universities in
Nigeria’s N200 billion Agricultural Stimulus
for Commercial Farming.
Objectives of the Scheme
The objectives of the scheme are:
To fast track development of the agricultural sector of
the
Nigerian economy by providing credit facilities
to commercial
agricultural enterprises at a single
digit interest rate of 9%.
To enhance national food security by increasing food
supply
and effecting lower agricultural produce
and product prices,
thereby promoting low food
inflation.
To reduce the cost of credit in agricultural production to
sector.
enable farmers to exploit the potentials of the
To increase output, generate employment, diversity the
Target Agricultural Commodities
Key Agricultural commodities to be covered
under the scheme are:
Cultivation of target crops (rice, cassava,
cotton, oil palm, wheat, rubber, sugar cane,
Jathropha carcus, fruits and vegetable);
Livestock (diary, poultry, piggery);
Fisheries.
Credit Support to the target commodities shall
be administered along the entire value chain of:
production, Storage, processing, market and
Enterprise development.
Beneficiaries
The beneficiaries are two-fold:
Corporate and Large Scale Commercial
farms/Agro-Enterprises with asset base
of not less than N350 million and
having the prospect to grow the net
asset of N500 million in the next 3
years.
Medium Scale Commercial
Farms/Agro- Enterprises with asset
base of not less than N200 million and
having the prospect to grow the net
asset to N350 million in the next 3
years.
1.
From the above, it can be clearly seen that Nigeria is
recruiting commercial farmers from its populace. This is
inappropriate and unsustainable. What we should be doing
is, growing up commercial farmers from among
smallholder farmers who have the experience, expertise
and commitment in the business of farming. The asset
base requirement of N200 million is therefore too high and
unrealistic for this category of farmers.
2.
In order to practice what we teach, Nigerian Universities
should fully participate in applying and drawing from the
Commercial Agricultural Credit Scheme (CACS) loan
package using their investment companies.

I propose that an institutional model be
packaged for the benefit of Nigerian
Universities especially the Universities of
Agriculture and other institutions as per the
funding ratio:
50% as Federal Government Grant to the
Institution: 50% loan from the Commercial
Agricultural Credit Scheme at 9% interest
rate.
The Agricultural orientated Institutions
should also receive financial support from
the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Water
Resources to enable them serve as centers
for training of commercial farmers located in
different parts of the country.
REFERENCES
1. Adaralegbe, A. (1969). A philosophy of Nigerian education.
Ibadan. Heinemann Education Books (Nigeria) Ltd.
2. Adedikpe, N.O. (2006). Development of the Successor Generation
of Farmers: Linkages towards sustainable food supply. An invited
lead paper presented by the Presidential Committee on Successor
Generation of Farmers, Syndicate Group 2. Illorin, Kwara State, Sept.
21, 2006. 47pp.
3. Federal Republic of Nigeria (2008). National Food Security
Programme. Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources,
Abuja. 95pp.
4. Madramooto, C.A. and Fyles Helen (2009). Food Security. Foresight
Vol.2(1): 1-9. McGill, Canada.
5. Uza, D.V. (2008). Food Security Policies and Programmes in
Nigeria. An invited paper presented at the International summit on
global Food Security, Montreal, Canada, Sept. 24-26, 2008, under
the auspices of McGill University, Canada.
6. Uza, D.V., Aribido, S.O., Abubaka, A. and Ahmed, S.H. (1999).
Transferable technologies for enhancing small holder livestock
production. Onaivi Publ. Co. Ltd. Makurdi. 135pp.