Remi Ladigbolu
Legendary musician Ebenezer Obey as soon as sang a Yoruba adage: “Tí oúnje bá ti kúrò nínú ìse, ìse bùse.” In different phrases, “When starvation is taken out of poverty, poverty is defeated.” That melody echoed when President Tinubu, in a speech to members of The Buhari Organisation who visited him on the Presidential Villa on Tuesday, September 2, highlighted the efforts of his authorities in tackling the nation’s myriad financial challenges, notably eradicating poverty.
Within the president’s personal phrases, one of the vital essential methods the federal government is tackling poverty is thru agricultural mechanisation.
Hear him, “I’ve simply signed up on an enormous mechanisation programme that in each area, we have now a mechanised centre for agric-mechanisation. That’s our path to meals sovereignty, meals safety. You take away starvation from poverty, you have got defeated poverty.”
However one wonders if that simplification, starched and polished by political rhetoric, is admittedly ample for what Nigerians endure every day.
Tinubu’s administration has launched a sweeping agricultural mechanisation push in a bid to sort out starvation. He has rolled out 2,000 tractors and over 9,000 farming implements, marking Nigeria’s largest mechanisation drive ever. In June 2025, on the launch beneath the Renewed Hope Agricultural Mechanisation Programme, he declared Nigeria’s agricultural renaissance had begun.
In Katsina, he commissioned an agricultural mechanisation centre with 400 tractors, linking it to meals safety, financial empowerment, rural revitalisation, and general prosperity. “As soon as we free ourselves from starvation, peace and prosperity will naturally comply with,” he enthused.
These are high-impact visuals. However we should pause and ask if meals alone is sufficient.
Officers typically refrain development in GDP, which was 3.4 % in 2024, however that masks deep systemic points. Unemployment could also be listed at 5.3 %, however youth unemployment stays over 50 %, and even increased for younger girls. Poverty is a multi-layered disaster: whereas 31 % dwell beneath the acute poverty line, rural poverty surges to a staggering 75.5 %.
And inflation is burning holes in pockets, hovering round 35 %. Transport and power prices are sky-high, and a proposed 5 % gas surcharge threatens to drag an estimated N796 billion extra from residents. In the meantime, VAT is slated to rise to 12.5 % subsequent 12 months, whilst fundamental items like meals and drugs stay excluded.
Tinubu’s tractor rollout has potential. In response to ThisDay, the programme might domesticate over 550,000 hectares, yield over 2 million metric tons of staples, and create 16,000 jobs, instantly benefiting half 1,000,000 households. But in Katsina, the flagship mechanisation centre is incomplete. Critics be aware that guarantees of two,000 tractors and 100 harvesters have additionally not been delivered.
With out dependable rural roads, electrical energy, irrigation, or colleges, these tractors threat rusting into idle symbols moderately than engines of transformation.
Poverty is deeper than starvation. Nigerians grapple with every thing from unstable energy and lack of unpolluted water, to breakdowns in healthcare, housing, colleges, job safety, taxation, and transport. Pulling starvation from poverty doesn’t erase these systemic failures.
The Jollof Index exhibits it prices N27,528 to prepare dinner one pot of Jollof rice, which is forty % of the N70,000 minimal wage. With inflation in double digits, households ration meals, skip healthcare, kids drop out of faculty, and able-bodied males flip to begging to outlive.
But authorities rhetoric pushes mechanisation because the magical wand of poverty discount. With out parallel commitments to social infrastructure and structural reform, that wand received’t wield lasting change.
What Obey’s lyric and Tinubu’s phrases seize in spirit, they distort in apply. Meals is critical, however not ample. Productiveness and infrastructure matter too.
As one on-line commentator not too long ago put it, “Nigeria’s woes aren’t simply starvation, they’re damaged legal guidelines, weak establishments, rogue tax factors, and poor power.” The comment echoes a sentiment shared by many Nigerians who imagine that lowering poverty to the only query of meals ignores the broader structural failures that form every day life.
In the meantime, Okonjo-Iweala, writing for Brookings, reminds us that structural reforms demand fiscal accountability, transparency, social security nets, and robust establishments, not merely headline-grabbing initiatives. And as Nigeria’s former Finance Minister and Coordinating Minister for the Economic system, her legacy underscores the significance of constructing establishments over counting on slogans.
Tinubu’s agricultural mechanisation is daring and symbolic, however poverty is a many-headed beast. Take one away, and others stay. No quantity of tractors will substitute entry to energy, water, healthcare, faculty charges, or predictable livelihoods.
If our intention is a resilient, inclusive financial system, we want full-spectrum reform, which encompasses strong infrastructure, healthcare, schooling, transport, clear power, honest taxation, and empowered native governance.
So sure, mechanisation issues. However peace, prosperity, shared alternative and social justice demand greater than tractors. They demand a dedicated technique that addresses poverty’s many faces and never simply its starvation.
•Ladigbolu is a Lagos-based journalist
