Nnaemeka Obiaraeri, a development economist, has criticized the Minister of Agriculture’s proposal to import 10,000 tractors, restating concerns raised in 2019 over a similar plan under former President Muhammadu Buhari administration.
Obiaraeri pointed out that the current plan, estimated to cost $1.1 billion through a public sector arrangement, amounted to repeating the same mistake made during the Buhari government.
Speaking to Channels TV on Tuesday, he argued that a more efficient approach would be to spend $750 million to import both tractors and bulldozers.
He said, “There was a proposal we raised in 2019 when the Buhari government came with the idea of borrowing 1.1 billion dollars to import 10,000 tractors.
“This current government now, we see the minister of agric repeating the same mistake the Buhari government did, signing MoU to import 10,000 tractors under a public sector arrangement that will cost the same $1.1 billion.
“Does it make sense to you that we can spend $750 million and import both tractors and bulldozers and somebody is trying to spend $1.1 billion to import only tractors? Does it make sense to you? And that is kind of things we see in Nigeria.
“Under the structure that we shared with them, you would have agro clusters in all over the 8,000 electoral wards that would be managed by thoroughly trained mechanical engineers.
“Farmers within those clusters would hire those machines, use it on their farms on an average cost of not more than N40,000.
“And when you do it, you would stimulate economic activities, you would grow jobs, you would have over $50 billion in Nigerian economy, but the minister in Nigeria today want to repeat the same mistake that happened under the Buhari regime is something we should be asking ourselves.”