Professor Banji Oyelaran-Oyeyinka, Special Adviser on Industrialization to the President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Akinwumi Adesina, stated that Nigeria must use technology to mitigate the impact of the flood on the people and ensure that they are not left to suffer.
“Nobody wants any of these natural disasters all over the world but we need to use technology to mitigate the impact on our people and to ensure that we don’t leave people to their sufferings,” Oyelaran-Oyeyinka said.
He revealed that a similar flood was stopped in 2012 using science and technology.
“I believe that as it happened in 2012 when Dr Adesina was Minister of Agriculture, remember we had a very severe flood in 2012 and many people were predicting apocalyptic scenarios that there is going to be a food shortage, crisis, and all of that but using technology and science at that time, the country was able to turn things around and that was when the dry season farming was started using exactly the receding flood and also to use science.
“Now as we speak, most of the time when things like this happen, there is a tendency for people to panic which is understandable, especially those who are affected but what we need to do now is to establish exactly how much of our farmlands are affected, how much of the communities are affected, how much of the crops planted that are destroyed.”
During a Channels TV program, Oyelaran-Oyeyinka discussed the launch of the bank’s Special Agro-industrial Processing Zones (SAPZ).
The African Development Bank will contribute $210 million, the Islamic Development Bank and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) will contribute $310 million, and the Nigerian government will contribute $18.05 million.
The SAPZ program’s first phase will be implemented in eight states across the country, beginning with the launch ceremony on Monday in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital.
Oyelaran-Oyeyinka acknowledged that the way state governments have responded to the flood situation may be a source of concern for agricultural investors, but he challenged the leaders to do better.
“The way society is designed is such that you have to mitigate risks, you have to put in place risk measures that will also anticipate these kinds of things. For the Special Industrial Processing loan for example, as you said if I read between the lines you are talking about the capacity of the states.
“You and I know that most developing countries like ours do not have so much capacity. As you can see in terms of the global hunger index, we are ranking extremely low.
“So, it speaks to the capacity of the states for service delivery, but I don’t want us to focus too much on that negativity, it’s actually very depressing that a country like ours will be featuring so low on nutritional food security. We shouldn’t have been where we are, that’s clear to me but it shouldn’t stop us also from action,” he said.
