The national agricultural sector is set for a major transformation as the central government mobilises dormant institutional resources. According to official project blueprints from the Federal Ministry of Education, the administration has launched a massive tertiary agricultural intervention valued at up to eighty billion naira.
The initiative, formally titled the Renewed Hope Tertiary Agricultural and Entrepreneurship Programme, targets severe national food insecurity. Minister of Education Dr Tunji Alausa unveiled the policy during a high-level operational meeting involving heads of forty selected tertiary institutions and the executive management of the Bank of Agriculture.
The ambitious project mobilises over five hundred thousand hectares of underutilised land owned by universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education across all geopolitical zones. According to guidelines issued by the Federal Ministry of Education, participating institutions are expected to designate approximately one thousand hectares each for commercial cultivation.
To execute the project, each selected institution is mandated to establish a dedicated Limited Liability Company to operate the farms commercially. The Bank of Agriculture has committed to providing between one billion and two billion naira per institution in direct financing and mechanisation facilities.
This funding is heavily supported by twenty billion naira in capital budget allocations explicitly earmarked by the Federal Ministry of Education. Furthermore, complementary capital is being integrated through earlier allocations processed by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund.
Beneficiary institutions will receive heavy machinery, modern irrigation pumps, high-yield seed varieties, and industrial fertilisers to support the massive tertiary agricultural intervention. To mitigate post-harvest losses, the government has arranged for produce aggregators and commercial off-takers to buy harvests directly from the campuses. Ahmadu Bello University Vice-Chancellor Prof Adamu Ahmed commended the project for enabling higher institutions to finally commercialise decades of academic research.
