Due to the fear of the Presidency, nobody wishes to talk about the reality of Fulani herdsmen attacks in farmlands across the nation. President Muhammdau Buhari is a Fulani man from Katsina State.
However, the apparent reflection of the attacks on farms and farmlands and by extension, the agriculture sector in Nigeria, have continued to hike the problem of insecurity, thus forcing foreign capital inflow into the sector to drop by 37.9 percent Year-on-Year (YoY) in the half year ended June 30, 2022 (H1’22).
Further findings even revealed that the attacks did not only drop foreign direct investments but local investments as many farmers are currently saving their lives at Internally Displaced Peoples (IDP) camps across the country.
The heightened insecurity in most parts of the country has restricted access to farms and sacked many farming communities, making investment in the sector unattractive. Vanguard’s findings from the Foreign Capital Importation report of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) for the second quarter to June 2022, shows that foreign capital flow to the sector fell to $59.17 million in H1’22 from $95.1 million in the corresponding period in 2021, representing a 37.9 percent decline within the period. Also the data shows that the share of agriculture sector in the total capital inflow for the six month period declined to 1.9 percent in H1’22 from 3.4 percent in H1’21. Farmers in Vanguard Agribusiness Roundtable had blamed insecurity and poor funding for the slow growth of the sector and called on the government to address the twin problem in order to scale up productivity and attract more investment into the sector.
