Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, has said Nigeria’s agricultural sector recorded 4.39 per cent growth in the second quarter of 2026, describing the performance as the highest in five years.
The figure represents a rise from 2.82 per cent recorded in the corresponding quarter of 2025, according to the latest Gross Domestic Product report of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Kyari disclosed this on Monday in Abuja while inaugurating the Coalition of Farmers Associations for Food Security in Nigeria (COA-FARMERS).
He attributed the development largely to Nigerian farmers, who, according to him, responded to President Bola Tinubu’s declaration of a state of emergency on food security after assuming office.
Kyari said Nigeria could not secure its food future without ensuring that farmers had a voice in decisions affecting the agricultural sector.
He noted that the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security was renamed to place greater emphasis on food production and what ultimately reaches the Nigerian table.
The minister charged COA-FARMERS to move beyond being an umbrella body for farmers’ associations and become a platform for identifying challenges, sharing credible information and helping government determine where agricultural programmes were succeeding or required adjustment.
Kyari also highlighted Nigeria’s election to chair the Governing Council of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), saying the country must speak at the international forum with the authority of its farmers.
“When Nigeria speaks in that Forum, it must speak with the authority of its own farmers, and this Coalition will help give that voice its substance,” he said.
He stressed the importance of women farmers to food security, saying they must have greater opportunities to participate in decision-making, 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 said.
The minister urged the coalition to provide honest feedback on government interventions, particularly where programmes were not reaching farmers or where implementation bottlenecks existed.
He said the Federal Government expected farmers to experience improved access to inputs, higher productivity, better markets and more secure livelihoods.
Kyari also disclosed that President Tinubu had appointed him Director of the Presidential Campaign Council for Agro-Allied Commodities Mobilisation, while the Minister of State for Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, would serve as Deputy Director.
Abdullahi, in his remarks, acknowledged the support of COA-FARMERS for Tinubu’s re-election bid and urged members to take the message of the administration’s achievements in agriculture and other sectors to the grassroots.
Earlier, National President of COA-FARMERS, Chief Emmanuel Anoh, said the coalition comprised 99 farmer associations and commodity organisations representing producers, aggregators, processors and marketers across the agricultural value chain.
Anoh commended government interventions, including fertiliser distribution, tractor mechanisation, the National Agricultural Growth Scheme-Agro-Pocket and Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones.
He called for a direct-to-farm approach in the distribution of agricultural interventions and quarterly stakeholder meetings between the coalition and the ministry.
The event culminated in the formal inauguration of COA-FARMERS, described by its organisers as a unified apex platform for commodity associations, farmers, agribusiness organisations and cooperative societies across Nigeria.
