…Canvasses value chain addition in agriculture
By Steve Oko
Former Commissioner for Finance in Abia State and Director of the Agribusiness Incubation Centre at Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, Dr. Philips Nto, has described Nigeria’s recently announced 3% GDP growth as “poor and insufficient” given the country’s vast agricultural potential.
Reacting to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) report on the rebasing of Nigeria’s GDP from 2019 to 2024, Nto expressed concern that the growth figures were not reflective of real progress. According to him, the rebased GDP of ₦205 trillion translates to just about $250 billion — a steep decline from Nigeria’s $574 billion GDP in 2014.
“Compared to South Africa and Egypt, whose economies stand at over $380 billion respectively, Nigeria’s $250 billion is a serious drop,” Nto said.
He noted that for a country endowed with 70 million hectares of arable land, abundant water resources for irrigation, and a population of over 230 million, a 3% growth rate is underwhelming.
Nto argued that the country’s failure to focus on value chain addition in agriculture has greatly hindered its economic performance. He decried the over $30 billion annual loss due to poor post-harvest handling and its adverse impact on GDP.
The former commissioner stressed that the modest GDP growth being celebrated was driven mainly by the services and non-oil sectors, while agriculture recorded only a 0.7% increase.
“If we had adopted better policies in agriculture, Nigeria’s economy would have surpassed that of South Africa by now and reclaimed its position as Africa’s largest economy,” he said.
He called on both federal and state governments to prioritize investments in agricultural value chains as a strategy to sustainably boost GDP and overall economic growth.
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