IN the month of March, some cities and states recorded the first heavy rain. With this drop of rain, the very strategic Igbe road in Igbogbo area of Ikorodu Lagos is as usual condemned till sometime in November or December when the dry season will set in again.
Governor Akinwumi Ambode who has given signs and symptoms that he can be trusted to manipulate Lagos possibly wishes to be reminded that Ikorodu with its landmass and out of the ordinary population increase inside the recent beyond can now not be handled as just any local government area. Did Lagos state officers see the kingdom of the roads leading to the Babington Seminary faculty wherein three college girls were abducted recently? Ambode changed into in Agric vicinity of the town months ago and must have seen how big this a part of Lagos is. Truth is that Lagos with all of the air of secrecy has many rural communities begging for infrastructural attention. This piece is as an alternative committed to farming, indeed to President Mohammadu Buhari’s announcement that agricultural revolution is a considered choice out of the monetary difficulties of the prevailing. That announcement requires a breakdown, simply as is completed after his budget presentation, without padding, to permit a layman’s information. The layman need to recognize and key into it if we need to begin to scratch the challenges Nigeria faces nowadays, because things are definitely horrific. Expenses of products have within the past 3 months risen so rapidly, frighteningly and unabatedly, engendering fear of the worst. In many cases they have got jerked as excessive as 50 consistent with cent even as a few have even doubled. The Naira continues the harmful slide inside the exchange market because of low foreign currency inflow. Regularly, the excessive wish of higher days following the swearing in of the brand new administration is giving way to despair. What is agricultural revolution? If it’s going to hinge on government action or state of no activity then it has already failed. In reality, authorities does now not lead a revolution, the human beings do. A quick response to the hunger within the land today is for each Nigerian who has a parcel of land or small area even in his backyard, front or back, to clear it and as the rains drop plant any crop in their choice. This have to reduce throughout – public servants, businessmen, non-public quarter employers and personnel, expert farmers, teenagers, task applicants and students. All and sundry need to preserve a farm irrespective of how small. Anyone who needs fertilizer must but it inside the open marketplace. Any coverage a good way to go back the us of a to fertilizer allocation through the government must be resisted at all cost. This have to attraction more to public servants who in many states are being owed arrears of salaries even when their governors who now behave as sole directors are property developers and merchants, certainly residing in unattainable affluence. To federal civil servants, this may serve as a direct bail out from blocked avenues for extra earnings occasioned by means of the advent of the unmarried Treasury Account (TSA) whilst they perfect techniques to circumvent it. How do I imply? How, as an example, did over 23,000 ghost employees who acquired salaries really worth billions of naira locate their way into the payroll of the federal authorities after the biometric capturing exercise which fee a fortune and which we were confident could nip such cases inside the bud? The maize you drop within the ground today will in 3 months come to be a cob of hundreds that provide type of nourishing meals, just as melon and okro. Yam can be harvested from the 6th month and cassava in nine months; rice and wheat from the fourth month. The plantain sucker you detach from the mom and plant in another place this month will fruit round December. The head a part of the yam that house wives typically throw into the dustbin can flip to a big yam tuber a few months later if buried inside the soil at the outside. Take maize and plantain. If you consider what it takes to supply these two and the wealthy harvest from them you weep for the usa. Corn of all varieties is among the healthiest ingredients in the world. It is able to be boiled or roasted for meal, certainly be used to provide a selection of nourishing dishes. It’s far used by industries to produce flour, malt drink, cornflakes, syrup, animal feeds, beer, starch and others. With all of the arable corn friendly land in each kingdom, top weather and excessive populace, Nigeria isn’t noted the various top ten maize manufacturers. America stays the unbeaten biggest maize manufacturer with over forty in keeping with cent of the sector’s output. Even the outdoor neighbour, South Africa is ahead of Nigeria in maize manufacturing. Yet, what it takes is to drop maize in a shallow ground, cowl it with sand, weed as a minimum as soon as in case you care, and in 3 months move for the rich harvest. Plantain does not even require fertilizer for excellent harvest, simply warm temperature, vivid soil and precise moisture. This modest, simplistic proposition can inside the next 3 months and past assist to cope with meals shortages in the u . S ., at the same time as we wait for the ‘revolution’. And whilst you put off hunger as the adage goes, you have broken poverty’s backbone. This can also lessen the strain on the foreign exchange marketplace. In Abuja and high forehead regions of Lagos mainly and a few GRAs in a few other cities, the elite compete to reveal off of their compounds shrubs and bushes with only aesthetic cost. Yet these nevertheless clutter the compounds with dry leaves just as other economically possible yet aesthetically priced timber like mango, orange, guava, pear, paw-paw, and others which they should have planted. The architects of the make Abuja inexperienced programme willfully omitted the economic benefits and emphasized the environmental beautification components. The so called professionals disparagingly name this subsistent or nearby farming. But it fed our fathers and moms and paid their children’s faculty fees. The industrial, mechanised, inorganic driven approach they were propagating for many a long time now’s nevertheless test-strolling in the face of ravaging starvation due to the fact it is one of the prototype familiar fashions that do not have a blend of indigenisation. Nigeria’s hope for meals protection and national development nevertheless relies upon on mechanised farming and industrialisation. We will begin to pursue and achieve this if we adopt proper rules and attitudes. In reality, authorities stranglehold on simply all sectors of the economic system together with land possession need to abate for non-public corporations to step in and make the favored impact. That is nevertheless in the realm of aspiration. The truth is that there may be an emergency and a few contingent measures ought to be adopted. The mild will increase in crude oil prices do not nonetheless translate to whatever yet because the amount of imports is insufferable. All have to awaken to this reality. That is the President’s message to all Nigerians.