Robert Achanya, Director-General, Kogi Bureau of Public Private Partnership (BPPP), says the state has concluded plans to introduce a strategic data management system to facilitate its agricultural transformation agenda.
Achanya said this in Lokoja on Friday at the meeting of Kogi Agricultural Vision Group and Agricultural Innovative Group, organised by Synergos Nigeria under the aegis of the State Partnership for Agriculture (SPA).
He said that Kogi, which was created over 25 years ago, needed a reliable data management system to plan its development.
“The BPPP strategy in the agriculture sector is to examine how we can support or contribute to the government’s plans to make agriculture a business concern, and not just farming for farming sake.
“Gov. Yahaya Bello has made it very clear that he is interested in the welfare of the peasant farmer.
“He wants to make the peasant farmer a commercial farmer in order for him to compete with other big-time farmers.
“We have an agriculture policy in the state and it is basically conventional but we are trying to develop specific sectoral strategies that will enable the agricultural sector to thrive, using the required data.
“We have about 47 product lines in Kogi State and we want to maximise our opportunities in those areas where we have a comparative advantage with data from the strategic data management system,’’ Achanya added.
Prof. Samson Aribido of the Faculty of Agriculture, Kogi State University, Anyigba, also advised the government to engage in data collection for sustainable development.
He said that the dearth of data on agricultural themes in the state could be likened to a “chronic disease’’.
Aribido said that agriculture was a very important sector of the economy because of its contributions to the state’s development.
He, however, noted that there was no proper coordination of the stakeholders’ contributions to the sector until the advent of Synergos Nigeria.
Mr Victor Adejoh, the Synergos Team Leader in Kogi, said that his organisation had brought together key agro processors, farmers and financial institutions, among others, to interact on how to have hitch-free access to mechanisation and credit.
