By Chris Osa Nehikhare
The Edo State Government’s 2025 budget allocates ₦51.9 billion to agriculture and food security — a figure that, at first glance, appears impressive. But when you peel away the layers, it reveals an unimaginative and pedestrian approach to agricultural development.
At a time when global and national conversations are centered on agri-industrialization, value chain integration, mechanization, and export-driven agribusiness, the Edo government still measures success by the harvesting of corn. Corn! In 2025, when modern states are leveraging biotechnology, climate-smart irrigation, and private-sector-led agriparks, Edo is celebrating subsistence-level outputs that belong to the past, not the future.
Budgetary size is not strategy. A ₦51.9 billion allocation means little if it’s driven by routine expenditure, recurrent costs, or poorly targeted interventions. What Edo needs is not token farming seasons or photo ops with maize stalks, but clear investment in commercial agriculture, storage and processing facilities, cooperative financing, and agro-industrial corridors that create jobs and boost rural incomes.
The current posture of the administration suggests a lack of innovation — a continuation of budgetary rituals without developmental imagination. The agricultural sector in Edo deserves more than symbolic gestures; it deserves a strategic transformation plan that makes the state the food basket of the South-South, not a subsistence-farming outpost celebrating corn harvests while others export produce and attract investors.
In short, the government’s approach is not forward-thinking — it’s pedestrian, reactive, and grossly disconnected from modern agricultural realities.
