For Nigeria to effectively diversify its economy, emphasis must be placed on agriculture, the National Coordinator/Chief Executive Officer, New Partnership for Africa’s Development, Mrs. Gloria Akobundu, has said.
According to her, NEPAD under her leadership will push for economic diversification through agriculture in order to ensure food security and reduce the restiveness in different parts of Nigeria.
The agency’s new CEO disclosed this during her maiden press briefing in Abuja and noted that the organisation had identified four major areas upon which it would launch a new approach to achieve its objectives.
Akobundu said, “These areas include economic diversification with emphasis on agriculture and food security; rethinking and realigning our engagements with development partners and other parts of the world in line with the reality of dwindling oil revenue and receipts.”
She also spoke about the plan to rebrand and relaunch NEPAD Nigeria “for greater meaning and efficacy in the lives of our people.”
The NEPAD boss observed that the agency’s vision, as encompassing as it appeared be, might not have envisioned all the current realities.
These realities, she said, “have come as a result of our growing population, new habits, problems like Boko Haram insurgency and the Niger Delta armed struggle, all of which have left various fallouts that have left us with an army of Internally Displaced Persons, the maimed, homeless and the like.”
Akobundu added, “All of these are what we seek to address in our new approach so that the vision of NEPAD will make meaning to the grass roots, to the trader or artisan in Monday Market of Maiduguri, Alaba Market of Lagos and even in Ochanja Market of Onitsha.”
She explained that NEPAD’s vision at inception was to establish a veritable framework for the development of Nigerians in different sectors and areas of national life, ranging from trade and investment to the development of infrastructure across the country.
“It is not part of my mandate here to question what we have achieved in the years gone by since this partnership was set up in the early 2,000. What will occupy me in the months and years ahead will certainly be what we can do to leverage our common efforts to make NEPAD better,” Akobundu said.
