The Nigerian government has once again unveiled agricultural reforms, boldly promising 21 million jobs to citizens who have long endured a cycle of broken promises.
Development Diaries reports that Vice President Kashim Shettima outlined the plans at the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO) National and Subregional Hand-in-Hand Investment Forum in Abuja.
The vice president also referred to hunger as ‘the great equaliser that reveals our vulnerabilities and the shared fragility of our existence’.
This development should ordinarily be reassuring for everyday citizens across the country. But no, it is not, as Nigerians have learned over the years that the louder the promises in Abuja, the fainter the impact in the villages where cassava, yam, and maize are actually grown.
And come to think of it, for decades, agriculture has been the recurring bride of government speeches, with every administration promising to make it the backbone of the economy, the path to food security, and the saviour of unemployed young people.
However, when the drums of inauguration fade and the cameras pack up, farmers are often left with little more than brochures and jingles. We were once told agriculture would create ten million jobs; later, 15 million.
And now the figure has swollen to 21 million. At this rate, the promises alone could solve unemployment if words counted as jobs.
The real test of sincerity is not in the arithmetic of political speeches but in the reality of Nigeria’s farmlands. If the government is truly serious, let us see tractors ploughing fields instead of parked at ceremonial grounds waiting to be photographed.
Let irrigation channels flow into dry-season farms instead of remaining sketches in PowerPoint slides, and let farmers, the people who feed this nation, access credit without queuing for months behind endless paperwork, only to be told to come back tomorrow.
Until then, 21 million agricultural jobs risk being added to the long list of invisible employment schemes, where the only thing harvested is a press statement.
Nigerians deserve more than promises because promises do not put food on the table. The average farmer in Benue or Kano cannot afford fertiliser because the price has doubled in the last two years.
Poultry farmers watch helplessly as the cost of feed eats into any chance of profit. Meanwhile, rural youth migrate to cities not because they want to, but because farming has been reduced to a back-breaking struggle without meaningful support.
Therefore, to convince Nigerians otherwise, government must move from podium to practice.
Agriculture has the potential to employ millions, yes, but only if backed by genuine investment, infrastructure, and transparency. It is not enough to announce reforms; the government must follow through with policies that make agriculture attractive to young people and profitable for those already engaged in it.
That means modernising farms with technology, subsidising inputs responsibly, fixing rural roads so crops do not rot before reaching markets, and ensuring that loans reach real farmers instead of ghost beneficiaries.
Trust between the government and the people is already fragile, eroded by years of ambitious promises that delivered little. If this new plan goes the same way, it will not just be another missed opportunity, but another wound to national confidence.
Development Diaries calls on citizens to demand transparency and timelines for every reform announced, not just applaud intentions. And for lawmakers, they must hold ministries accountable for every naira allocated in the name of agricultural transformation.
