Top farmer, OOK Group GMD, Omolara commends President Tinubu for admitting food insecurity in Nigeria

Group Managing Director, OOK Group, Omolara Svenson

By Anthony Maliki, Abuja

President Bola Tinubu has been commended for admitting there is food insecurity in the country and showing great interest in the agriculture sector.

He is however but reminded on areas of improvement for food sufficiency in Nigeria.

The Group Managing Director of OOK Group, Omolara Svenson made the remarks in an interview with Apex News Exclusive in Abuja.

She said one of the best decisions that Tinubu administration has taken is to come out and admit that there is food insecurity or security emergency.

According to her, Nigeria has food security emergency since the past nine to ten years but the general public didn’t take it seriously because it didn’t come from the right channel.

Omolara, who has over 20 years’ experience in the agriculture business, explained that anytime she has opportunity, she tells people there is food security emergency in Nigeria.

Managing a sister company OOK Farms Limited, the Group Managing Director, said when there is a problem, the next thing is to look for solution and President Tinubu’s admittance is a wake-up call.

Omolara remarked that everyone is now scrambling, trying to get into agriculture and coming up with initiatives.

She presented a three-point focus for the Tinubu administration to further boost agriculture production.

According to her, the first thing the administration needed to do is to go to the grassroots and provide farmers at that level proper infrastructure, orientation and reorientation.

“Give them what they need in terms of infrastructure, train them, their orientation needs to change. They need to understand that this is 2023 and not 1973, because they are actually the ones farming what you and I are consuming,” she explained.

Omolara pointing out that the government needed to ensure policy implementation stressing that though Nigeria has one of the best policies on paper in Africa but implementing them is very poor.

She also expressed dismay on Nigeria’s dead research centres urging government to revive and make them up and running.

The Group Managing Director said if the nation’s research centres are functioning well, “we won’t need to beg investors to come into the agriculture business sector.”

Omolara explained that if one wanted to export yam, the seeds had to be certified by a Danish company.

“What does a Danish company know about yam,” she queried.