Nigeria’s tractor shortage threatens food security- Stakeholders
CHIGOZIE AMADI
Stakeholders have raised concerns over Nigeria’s severe tractor shortage, warning that the country’s low mechanisation levels pose a major threat to food security.
At the State of Mechanisation Ecosystem in Nigeria stakeholder forum event held in Abuja on Thursday, the Chief Executive Officer of TracTrac Mechanisation, Godwin Ohuruogu, stressed the scale of the challenge. He noted that Nigeria currently has “about six tractors for every 10,000 hectares of land,” far below the needs of farmers.
He projected that “in the next three to four years” the country should target “up to 20 tractors for every hectare,” a goal he believes “will go a long way in improving the mechanisation situation currently.”
He explained that the sector requires significant financing, estimating that “whatever form of investment can add about 250,000 tractors into the ecosystem, that will be the investment that we need. Whether it’s 50 million per tractor or 55 million per tractor. But we need to have at least 250,000 tractors in the space in the next three to five years.”
He added that improving the sector should not be left entirely to government initiatives but requires the active involvement of a wider group of stakeholders.
“For us to actually change the mechanisation situation in Nigeria, it has to go beyond the government,” he said.
“The government is playing its part, but can others please just come to the table and let us contribute our part? Can investors come to the table? Can banks come to the table?
“Can private entities come to the table? Let’s talk about how we can contribute our quota to moving the current tractor density to something more reasonable so that every farmer in Nigeria can boast of having access to a tractor that is not very far away from them.”
Beyond funding, Ohuruogu pointed to poor investor knowledge as another bottleneck. “If you look at it from the lens of investors, do investors have enough information to make that investment decision? I say no. People have information about things that are easier to invest in. But over the years, mechanisation seems to be some sort of difficult space.
“So a lot of would-be investors are not going into this space because they do not have enough information to make that judgment. And one of the things we want to do in Trac Trac is to make that information available, right, to everybody out there so that they can make an investment decision.”
Calling for a united effort, he added: “From the perspective of the government, the government should enable, should make it easy for people to invest and make the business easy. From the point of view of the farmers, they should understand that they need these tractors and they should patronize the different vendors providing tractor services so that there can be continued interest in that space.”
Ohuruogu said Trac Trac has a long-term strategic plan “to raise interest about the, about investment in the mechanisation space, and to also continue the already, you know, the conversation on mechanisation policy that is already, at the table of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, you know, and all that, and to see how far we can take this conversation, the short-term policy forward.”
“So what we want to see in the next five years is, number one, a reasonable investment in the mechanisation space, whether by the government or private sectors or by NGOs or by whoever, to the tune of about 250,000 tractors, and also train about 500,000 mechanization service providers into the ecosystem,” he said.
Also speaking, the CEO of the National Centre for Agricultural Mechanisation, Abdulrasheed Kamal, stressed the importance of data in shaping Nigeria’s mechanization drive.
“To really guide national policy and Investment and to accurately assess the food security equation, there is a critical need for updated data with reliable statistics,” he said.
Kamal noted that “several barriers persist within the mechanisation ecosystem. These include limited access to modern equipment, inadequate infrastructure, and insufficient technical expertise among stakeholders.
Despite these obstacles, there are considerable opportunities for improvement. Increasing investment in research and development, expanding training programmes, and enhancing accessibility to machinery can foster growth and innovation within the sector.”
He identified the lack of a domestic machinery industry as a fundamental weakness. “The non-availability of a domestic agricultural machinery industry is a major and fundamental problem for agricultural mechanisation in Nigeria. Crucial for affordability and accessibility, this industry is arguably the most important source of affordable machinery for Nigeria’s vast population of smallholder farmers, who cannot afford new, imported tractors.”
According to him, smallholder farmers are confronted with numerous challenges ranging from lack of access to finance and technology to limited technical capacity, poor power supply, and competition from used imported machines.
Kamal explained that without local manufacturing, Nigeria is forced to import all categories of machinery, from small power tillers to large tractors and harvesters. This reliance on imports results in high costs and foreign exchange pressure, as well as inflated purchase prices. It also creates a shortage of spare parts and a poor maintenance culture, which in turn leads to chronic downtime and abandoned equipment across the country. Moreover, many of the imported machines are not suited to local conditions, further limiting their effectiveness.
Recently, the Nigerian government undertook one of its largest mechanization drives by partnering with Belarus to import agricultural equipment. Under this deal, 2,000 tractors and 9,000-plus farming implements from Belarus have been delivered to help modernize farming.
However, while these tractors are beginning to arrive and be deployed across states, many stakeholders warn that they are not yet sufficient to close the huge mechanisation gap in Nigeria. The pace of delivery, maintenance, spare parts provisioning, and training needs to speed up.
Some time ago, the Federal Government, through the National Agricultural Development Fund, announced plans to deploy 10,000 John Deere tractors across Nigeria within five years as part of efforts to close the country’s mechanization gap.
Despite these commitments, the tractors are yet to be widely seen on Nigerian farms. While contracts have been signed and agreements sealed, reports indicate that large-scale delivery and distribution are still pending.
