" IF THE GOVERNMENT WILL BE FAIR TO NIGERIANS AND HERSELF THEY WOULD KNOW THAT LESS THAN TEN PERCENT OF SUCH LOAN AVAILABLE HAS BEEN ACCESSED, WHICH MEANS THERE IS A BOTTLENECK THERE AND GOVERNMENT SHOULD FIND OUT WHAT IS CAUSING THE BOTTLENECK AND DO THE NEEDFUL TO REMOVE THE BOTTLENECK , SO THAT MORE PEOPLE CAN GO ONTO THE FARM TO TILL THE LAND AND BRING IN MORE FOOD, TO PUT POVERTY AT BAREST MINIMUM "-PRESIDENT WEST AGRO INPUT DEALERS ASSOCIATION; AGRARIAN OLAYINKA AMAO AKINMADE.

    

  Nigeria as a great nation abounds in both natural and human resources but as in accordance to an adage "It is when one hasn't gone thus far one may be questioning the fact against the hypothesis and in the quest to actualize the fact that to bail out our country from this queer-mire it found itself then we believe "all hands must be on deck", hence we focus our tentacle towards agricultural sector, here we bent over backward to get an experienced practitioner; and an age-long pragmatic farmer in person Agrarian Olayinka Amoo Akinmade, who is also the President of West Agro Input Dealers who technically and professional proffered some practicable suggestions and tips, on how those in the corridor of power in Nigeria can get the country out of the myriad  problems it has found itself, especially the area of unemployment of the numerous graduates, that the several nation's universities have been producing into the labour market, without any jobs available for them to be engaged into, for their means of livelihood.
 And here underneath our exclusive interview with him went thus as unwind-ed below  :

 Introduce yourself Sir?

 My names are Olayinka Amoo Akinmade, President of West Agro Input Dealers Association  which is the body that represents all people; who market agricultural Input in the South West and that is why we call it WAIDA; West Agro Input Dealers Association , we have about six of such groups all over Nigeria that is in the six geo-political zones of the Federation of Nigeria.

 Farmers might have one or two stories to tell, then as a stakeholder in the agricultural sector how has the business being, since the inception of this present regime in power ?

 Thank you very much for the question, this present regime came in May 29, 2015 and as if it was the fact bringing in a lot of hope to all Nigerians but unfortunately it was greatly threatening just a few months after this present regime came in, with a lot of hope particularly for agriculture because they have realized from inception of this regime that the way out for Nigeria; particularly vice a vice employment and all that is agriculture which takes in large population of citizens, so they believe if they go into such an occupation, first it would get most of our citizens gainfully employed, secondly it would provides food for the tables and finally it would also improve the GDP of the Federation, which was hitherto running on a mono-economic-mode of life; which is petroleum, but suddenly recession crept in and you see a lot of things came in with the recession, first the rate they change the naira to dollar ; the exchange rate went bad, as high as going beyond the roof-top and this actually created a lot of problems for farmers because anybody who wanted to do a good farming business particularly arable crop farming would know that he cannot do it with the old hoe and cutlass thing, which is always accompanying with a lot of drudgery, such that a farmer would only be able to do one or two hectares of farm-land, this has been at very very painful level, so they need products that come from developed world like the inputs, fertilizers, chemicals, spraying-equipment, tractors and what-have-you,  so this actually could no longer be easily acquired, because a lot more (million) naira is now needed, to acquire even the simple chemical products, that we use to control weeds and worn-offs, insects on farms and all that , so this is actually part of what the farmers are really experiencing now, so we need more money to do the same type of farm we use to do with much less money in the past.

 With the present challenges what is the way out?

Thank you very much , the way out is easy to recognize but actually most often it is the implementation , for example the Federal Government claims they have a lot of money they set aside through the Central Bank of Nigeria for farmers to borrow and do the farming business and they even claims that most of this money go under the single-digit interest rate and they don't also take any collateral from farmers, to be able to acquire this bu how easy is it for farmers to actually access this fund , if the government will be fair to Nigerians and herself they would know that less than ten percent of such fund available has been access which then means there is a bottleneck there and government should find out what is causing the bottleneck and do the needful , to remove the bottleneck so that more people can go onto the farmland to till the land and bring in more foods and of course where there is sufficiency of food then poverty is reduced to the barest minimum, that is what the adage says.

 Farmers are expressing reservation over the high cost of agricultural input hence it is affecting their produce , what do you think can be done to bring the cost of these agricultural  input down?

 Thank you very much , it is still the government, because the government must provide the enabling environment, in each situation where farmers are having difficulties . it is strange when developed world tells our own government; don't give subsidy, if you want to give subsidy ; do it this way, don't do it that way", which they know would be difficult to implement , in the developed world there is no where either in Europe , America or even far East where subsidy is not given, in such a way as to reduce the aches and pains of farmers , in fact in US it goes beyond just giving subsidy, when they know farmers have produced and they cannot sell they even go to the extent of taking these products together and then pouring it back into the storage, so that they can control all the farmers and ensure that each farmer is able to return to the farm, but not in Nigeria , it is always a spiral thing in Nigeria , they make you farmer this year there is surplus  and then you feel unhappy, you withdraw from the farm and only for scarcity to creep in the following year and everybody now rushes in, after that and it goes on and on like that, so there is the year of surplus and scarcity alternately and this cannot even encourage the farmers and it does not also provide for citizens to be adequately fed and that is why we have the complaint of hunger all over Nigeria.

 In respect of unemployment couple with the large number of graduates from the nation's numerous universities that are not adequately engaged to any meaningful jobs , what is your association doing to get this rectified by initiating different ideas for their employment?

 Thank you very much , our politicians in this country sorry to say are very selfish , selfish in the sense that what drives them into the politics is the emolument, as against true politics , they don't most of the time put on their thinking caps, to ensure that they work out some models, that will make the Nigerians get out of recession, either by way of encouraging the young graduates to go into farms and if you want to encourage them to go into farms you must provide the necessary things, that will give them the encouragement , somebody that has always being used to the electricity you want to send him to the village or bush where he would now even light the candle to put up light at night ; that one will not be acceptable again, even when you are asking people to go to farm before harvesting their crops is there anything for them to take as loan facilities, okay! while you are producing this crop we give you loan for your up-keeps, so that by the time you harvest your crops we take the money from your harvested crops proceeds, no government does that

 Sir! as the President of WAIDA that specializes in chemical and application,what have you been doing to educate our farmers, in the use of chemical on their finished harvests in the storage, as you can note that some of the exporters of our grains from home were disappointed ,to have had their grains returned, on the excuse of overactive effect of chemical on their produce? 

 Thank you very much, I think it is a programme that should be jointly carried out,we do our own bit, we run radio programmes, we invite experts from the agric sub-sectors of the economy right from the research institutes, ministries, big-time-farmers, to come and talk and educate farmers,in what to do , how to do,where and when to do ,so that if people listen to all this,we even bring experts from the storage aspect of the Federal Government parastatals, but again it has to be well coordinated ,it has to relate back to the Ministry of Agric and of course Ministry of Science and Technology such that we recognize or try to find out what happened in other places,for example on our perishables, after-all when you have mangoes,oranges and such things in other countries, such like Saudi Arabia, Jordan etc they know how to preserve these fruits, such that it keeps for a very many weeks, before it goes bad, but the government who says I wants to produce food must also recognize that they need to do something,that must encourage storage facility and little research can be joined into t5his , by the parastatals  and organizations related to this,like NIHORT, the CRIN and all these government parastatals that has one thing or two on what to do,now they are talking about taking yams to oversea without trying to make sure it keeps for some good period of time, I doubt if they will meet with the level  of acceptability,that they are actually hoping for, so we have some experts there that is for root-crops,that can go to research,that can find out how long can our yams last, without getting rotten or breaking into pieces and such that when you export them the people there we meet them in the right quality of their harvest, so that it would encourage good revenue.

 What is your message from your end to the public?

 Well, our large-time customers are doing their bids and a lot of people are returning to the farm and in fact I think more women are now doing farming business than men and the only thing I would say is that they should keep it up, occasionally when you go into the farm you don't instantly begin to gain but if you stay on it within a short period of time everything would balance up and it could be a positive growth rather than some "come see; come saw",so that there could be a year of good weather;a year of not good weather, a year of even distribution of breaks, another year of floods and things like that but if you stay with it, you gain more experience and you get better as a farmer and you will be producing more for the country and so much talk about food sufficiency for Nigeria citizens would come in and we have more people going into farm.

 Sir, finally coming down to your association how has the association fare and what is your words of encouragement to the members of your association?

 Well,our association is now a national association we as WAIDA and it exists as regional association in the six-Geo-political zones-of the Federation of the Federation, with the headquarter in Abuja, yes! we have a lot of people in our association now and the good thing is that most of them are very trained in the professions they have chosen ,therefore we don't have any fear of any wrong doing being done from that , but what we have to say is that we want to encourage more people, for example is that on the other question of the young school leavers;if they come in and they got trained the thing there is that they would have some gainful jobs,to be doing and it could encourage them to go into farms-business,apart from selling input, when they know what input would do well on the farm, they can be encouraged on that to make some farms,which would grow from small farmstomake them even become big-term farmers.

 This is how we came to the conclusion of the ever authoritative and richly embedded but professional tips and facts, about what the government needs to do, especially the government of the day in Nigeria, to bail the country out from the myriad problems, bedevil-ling it and her numerous youth, especially in the area of unemployment, hunger and substituting the mono-economic mode, which is petroleum, with agriculture the only mainframe to the buoyant economic of  any nation, for more development in all ramification.