By Omoyeni Ojeifo
Nigeria’s agriculture sector grew by 4.39 per cent in the second quarter of 2026, recording its strongest performance since 2021, the Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Sen. Abubakar Kyari, has disclosed.
Kyari made the disclosure on Monday in Abuja while inaugurating the Coalition of Farmers Associations for Food Security in Nigeria, COA-FARMERS, on behalf of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
The minister attributed the growth to farmers who responded to President Tinubu’s declaration of a state of emergency on food security shortly after assuming office.
“A country cannot secure its food future if the people who produce its food are heard only after decisions have been made,” Kyari said in a statement emailed to PerSecondNews on Monday by Ikem Ezeaja, the Ministry’s spokesperson.
According to him, the President’s renaming of the Ministry as the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security was aimed at focusing attention on what reaches the Nigerian table.
Kyari charged COA-FARMERS to become more than an umbrella of associations, saying its value should lie in organising farmers around solutions and strengthening the flow of credible information from the field.
He urged the coalition to help the Ministry identify where the President’s programmes were working, where constraints remained and where adjustments were required.
He underscored the role of women farmers in food security, stressing that they must help shape decisions and influence programmes, given their roles in production, processing, aggregation and marketing.
“Food security will not be secured by speaking for women farmers. It will be strengthened by ensuring that women farmers have the space, the tools and the opportunity to organise, invest, produce and grow,” Kyari stressed.
He charged the coalition to be a partner that would tell the Ministry the truth by showing where programmes reached farmers, helping extend their reach and identifying obstacles where they fell short.
The minister also disclosed that President Tinubu recently appointed him Director of the Presidential Campaign Council for Agro-Allied Commodities Mobilization, while the Minister of State for Agriculture and Food Security would serve as Deputy Director.
In his remarks, the Minister of State for Agriculture and Food Security, Dr. Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, acknowledged the support of COA-FARMERS for the President’s re-election bid.
Abdullahi, a one-time senator, urged members of the coalition to work collectively towards the goal by returning to their communities to showcase the achievements of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in agriculture and other sectors of the economy.
National President of COA-FARMERS, Chief Emmanuel Anoh, commended Nigerian farmers across grains, roots and tubers, livestock, fisheries, horticulture, cash crops and agro-allied services for working together to enhance farming business, wealth creation, livelihoods improvement and community transformation.
He described Kyari as a “Farmer’s Champion” and commended interventions including stabilisation of food prices, fertiliser distribution, the tractor mechanisation programme, the National Agricultural Growth Scheme–Agro-Pocket and Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones.
Anoh appealed for the adoption of a direct-to-farm model in distributing interventions and quarterly stakeholder dialogue with the Ministry.
The event brought together commodity associations, farmers, agribusiness organisations, registered farmers’ associations and cooperative societies from across Nigeria.
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