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Mafroosh12
BUK Centre Working To Bring Back Groundnut Pyramid In Kano
~1.5 mins read
The centre for Dryland Agriculture (CDA) Bayero University Kano is leading other development partners in the groundnut value chain to produce russet resistant varieties of groundnut with a view to enhancing production of the crop in the dryland areas of the country.
Over 50 hectares of demonstration farms have been cultivated in Kano with the technical support of the centre to boost production of different varieties of the crop for the farmers.
Groundnut has been one of the main contributors to Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) prior to the discovery of crude oil in the 70s; and since then production of the crop suffered a setback and total neglect that resulted to the disappearance of groundnut pyramids of Kano.
Speaking to Daily Trust recently during a field visit to some of the groundnut farms, the Deputy Director, CDA, Professor Sanusi Gaya said about nine varieties of groundnuts have so far been developed by the Institute for Agricultural Research, Ahmadu Bello University Zaria in an attempt to revive Groundnut farming.
“The reason why we decided to embark on this tour of groundnuts farms is to showcase what the Centre for Dryland Agriculture of Bayero University is doing with its teaming partners especially farmers and seed companies so that people will know the contribution of the centre to the development of Agriculture in Kano state and Nigeria in general.
“Before the oil boom, agriculture generally was the mainstay of the Nigerian economy and there is no gainsaying the fact that groundnut has contributed tremendously to the GDP of Nigeria but around late 70s to late 80s there was serious decline in groundnuts production in Nigeria which occurred due to disease that is call russet.
“Russet is a disease that reduced groundnuts production to zero level but with the advent of science new varieties are being developed by several institutions both national and international, the institutions that are working in Nigeria have come with new diverse varieties that are resistant to that russet disease and that is what is bringing groundnuts production back into limelight in Nigeria.
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Mafroosh12
Pandemic Policy Without Facts
~1.3 mins read
In 1966, after a stint as head of Nigeria’s Economic Planning Unit, the economist, Wolfgang Stolper wrote a book titled ‘Planning Without Facts: Lessons in Resource Allocation from Nigeria’s Development’.
His point is that development planning without data is little more than groping in the dark.
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Twenty-four years after, another economist, Paul Mosley borrowed Stolper’s title to explain that Nigeria’s Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) failed not necessarily because it was bad policy, but because we had embarked on the reforms without first collecting reliable data.
So while policy action was enthusiastic, Mosley claimed, it was often wide off the mark as the government repeatedly went far beyond even the expectations of the IMF and the World Bank in stripping public entities.
Today, we may well be groping in broad daylight with a viral pandemic.
COVID-19 is primarily a healthcare crisis, the biggest for many countries in a century, in terms of huge numbers of patients, overwhelmed healthcare systems, threats to frontline workers, and most sadly, large numbers of deaths.
Its secondary impacts on government, economy and society, however, are no less significant.
But the pandemic has also been very local and contextual, manifesting differently across regions and countries, and even within countries.
When in March this year our federal and state governments announced measures to shutdown work-places, schools, businesses, homes and streets, it was simply the right thing to do.
Then, the first priority was to avoid the catastrophic public health crisis that many predicted.
However, six months into the pandemic, it is quite clear that the public health dimensions of COVID-19 in Nigeria, as in much of Africa, looks very different from what we have seen so far elsewhere, as even a report by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 13th August clearly stated.
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