The Nigerarian sector has a strong rural base; hence, concern for agriculture and rural development become synonymous, with a common root.

Agriculture used to be the main stay of the Nigerian economy before the discovery of oil in the late 1950s. “Today’s Nigeria has transitioned from being a self-sufficient country in food production and supply to a net importer, spending $11Billion (USD) on the importation of rice, fish and sugar. It just makes no sense to me at all”. These were the words of Nigeria’s erstwhile Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development in the first quarter of 2015. It hides no rhetoric but affirms the potential of the Nigerian State to become not only a self-sufficient producer of both food and cash crops, but also a leading producer of food and fiber products for global export. Sadly, with the discovery of oil, Nigeria has largely become dependent on the importation of food to feed its growing population. The fact that the Nigerian agricultural sector is moribund cannot be overemphasized. This is not, however, to say that it contributes little or nothing to the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). But it must be said that the sector suffers from gross under-utilization of capacity and low productivity output. However, amidst these facts are challenges which, if addressed from strategic management and market-driven point of view, would translate to opportunities that could reposition Nigeria as a leader in the food and fiber global chain.

Nigeria at a Glance

Agriculture is broadly divided into four sectors in Nigeria:

• Crop production

• Fishing production

• Livestock production and

Crop production remains the largest segment and it accounts for about 87.6% of the sector’s total output. This is followed by livestock, fishing and forestry at 8.1%, 3.3% and 1.1% respectively.

Nigeria has 70.8million hectares of agriculture land area with maize, cassava, guinea corn, yam, beans, millet and rice being the major crops. Nigeria’s rice production rose from 3.7million metric tons in 2017 to 4.0million metric tons in 2018. Inspite of this, only 57% of the 6.7million metric tons of rice consumed in Nigeria annually is locally produced leading to a deficit of about 3million metric tons, which is either imported or smuggled into the country illegally. To stimulate local production, the government banned importation of rice in 2019.

As for cassava, Nigeria produced 59million tons in 2017, making it the world’s largest producer (approximately 20% of global production).

Animal production has remained under-exploited. Livestock mostly reared by farm families in Nigeria are the small ruminants like goats (76million), sheep (43.4million), and cattle (18.4million). The ecology in the northern part of the country makes it famous for livestock keeping. In addition to small and large ruminants, poultry population stands at 180million poultry (FMARD, 2017).

Nigeria is the largest fish consumer in Africa and among the largest fish consumers in the world with about 3.2million metric tons of fish consumed annually. Its fisheries and aquaculture are among the fastest growing sub-sectors in the country. With a coastline of 853km and over 14million hectares of inland waters, total fish production per year is close to million metric tons (313,231 metric tons from aquaculture and 759,828 metric tons from fisheries).

Between January and March 2021, the agriculture contributed 22.35% of the total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which rose to about 30% in September 2021.