The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Abubakar Kyari, has called for the establishment of a national digital farmers’ register to eliminate duplication and ensure that government support reaches genuine farmers.
Mr Kyari made the call on Tuesday in Abuja while declaring open the National Strategic Dialogue on AGROW Subcomponent 2.2 National Implementation Strategy and Digital Agriculture Architecture held in Abuja.
He said Nigeria’s ambition to feed its over 200 million population rests on knowing every farmer by name, farm location and what they grow, noting that farm inputs and credit are only useful when records direct them to the right beneficiaries.
“A bag of fertiliser or a loan is only useful when the record directs it to the right farmer,” the minister said.
According to him, the proposed register will build on existing initiatives, including the ministry’s partnership with the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), to link farmers to their National Identity Numbers (NIN), the review of existing farmer databases with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the Digital Villages project with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), and the ministry’s own data and mapping systems.
Mr Kyari charged states to take ownership of the process by leading enumeration, verification and routine updates, while the Federal Ministry, through the Federal Department of Agricultural Data and Analytics (FDADA) and the National Project Coordination Office (NPCO), will coordinate and enforce a single interoperable standard.
He said the country needs one agricultural information ecosystem with agreed definitions, documented interfaces for authorised exchange, and clear data governance within Nigeria’s national digital infrastructure and data protection law.
The minister said state financing under AGROW will be linked to verified growth in farms registered, to ensure accuracy over mere numbers, adding that the register must capture every farmer, including women, youth and those in areas without network coverage.
“We did not start talking about this today. Let this be the Dialogue that built Nigeria’s farmer registry,” he said.
In his remarks, the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Atiku Bagudu, said an authentic farmers’ registry would ensure adequate planning and budgeting and foster proper coordination between the federal and state governments to achieve food and nutrition security.
The Minister of State for Agriculture and Food Security, Aliyu Abdullahi, said Nigeria’s agrifood transformation cannot be built on fragmented data, noting that the ministry had missed several opportunities to build a robust agricultural data system since the Agricultural Databank Project of the 1990s.
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Mr Abdullahi described agricultural data and analytics as productive infrastructure as fundamental as roads and power, and said the dialogue aligns with five national goals: food security, food sovereignty, agro-industrial growth, export development and foreign exchange earnings, and environmental sustainability.
He said traceable data is critical to stop the rejection of Nigeria’s hibiscus, sesame, cashew, ginger and cocoa at foreign ports and to enable the country to command premium prices in international markets.
He warned that the greatest threat to transformation is not technology or funding but institutional rivalry and lethargy, describing siloed territorial protection of data as “the quietest form of corruption of purpose” that leaves farmers registered three times in three incompatible systems or not at all.
He announced that the ministry has finalised the establishment of FDADA to serve as the sector’s data gatekeeper, noting that Nigeria has historically invested heavily at the data collection level but under-invested at the knowledge and intelligence levels.
Mr Abdullahi said the financing window under AGROW is open and must not be dissipated into fragmentation, urging Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to concede duplication, states to bring their realities to shape the architecture, development partners to hold government to one system, and the private sector to accept the discipline of interoperability.
