Governments have been charged to take drastic steps at making enough food available by providing an enabling environment for farmers to produce more. This point was made known by discussants on the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB), Ogun State radio station, FUNAAB Radio 89.5FM live interactive programme, Boiling Point. The programme was organised to commemorate the 2021 World Food Day, observed every year on October 16th. They said the problem of Nigeria was not lack of policy, but implementation as well as government’s insincerity to provide basic infrastructure to aid farming. According to Prof. Abdulrazaq Adebowale of the Department of Food Science and Technology, College of Food Science and Human Ecology (COLFHEC) of FUNAAB, Nigeria was not secured in terms of food security, adding that to attain mass food production, the country needs to move from rain-fed agriculture and embrace irrigation.
“As a nation, we need to improve our processing and storage facilities to reduce food losses. We don’t have storage facilities for perishable agricultural products. The government needs more effort to improve infrastructure, especially power to help in the storage of farm produce”, he said. On his part, Dr. Ayedun Isaiah Segun, a lecturer at the Protestant University of West Africa, Port Novo, Benin Republic said the government was not doing much in terms of agriculture. He added that the country needed to face agriculture to prevent hunger in the land. According to him, “The level of corruption is so high in the country. There should be follow up whenever money is being disbursed for any project and Nigerians should be dedicated and shun corruption to make Nigeria work”.