Adesina Blasts Oshiomhole Over Comments On Agriculture Transformation Agenda

Former minister of agriculture and rural development, Dr Akinwumi Adesina, has faulted the position of Edo State governor, Comrade Adams Oshiomole, that the Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA) of the immediate past administration was a big scam.

According to him, such comments coming from a governor who prides himself as a progressive who has spent most of his career fighting falsehood and oppression was rather deplorable on some counts.

Media report had last week quoted Oshiomole as arguing that Nigeria was still import-dependent on rice and other foods because the agriculture transformation agenda was a big scam.

But Adesina who is currently the president of Africa Development Bank (AFDB), contended that Oshiomole’s claim was “lacking in depth, sound logic and was a calculated attempt to rubbish everything about Goodluck Jonathan’s administration under whose leadership, he was able to perform so creditably.”

In a statement by his special assistant on media, Dr Olukayode Oyeleye, the former agriculture minister regretted that the claim was a bad public relations stunt, not expected from the governor.

Gov Adams Oshiomole

This, he added, was even so when it is considered that Oshiomole’s comments detract from the ATA, a reform that was vigorously pursued and implemented by Dr Akin Adesina.

Oyeleye said it was “uncharitable and against the interest of Nigerian public to politicise issues of agriculture and food security as Governor Oshiomhole did in his criticisms of that sector.

“Nigerians know better and will not to allow this governor’s attempt to reinvent the wheel or publicity stunt to derail what is perhaps the most ambitious and successful agricultural blueprint since Nigeria’s independence,” he added.

Adesina observed that at a time that the nation desperately needed to build upon his achievements as agriculture minister , Oshiomole could only do the Edo people some good by recognising the fact that lending by commercial banks to agriculture increased from 0.07 per cent in 2011 to five per cent in 2014, while banks lent a total of N27.5 billion to fertiliser and seed companies.

He said, “As the chief executive of a state so blessed with natural resources so highly favourable to productive agriculture, Governor Oshiomhole ought to think rather on how to make Edo more enterprising. In doing so, an area he is expected to be more interested in should be agriculture.

“For that reason, Governor Oshiomhole ought rather to be keen on how the intervention that brought agriculture from policy oblivion to a sector that is now widely embraced could be replicated in Edo State within the remaining number of months he has to spend as a governor.

“He ought to have been asking, for instance, the erudite, resourceful and hardworking former minister, how he was able to achieve so much within so short a time.”

The statement made available to LEADERSHIP yesterday continued: “If Governor Oshiomhole knows how to play the politics well, he should be thinking of how to leverage on the former minister’s growing relevance at the continental level as the new head of the biggest development financial institution in Africa.”