Minister of agriculture and rural development, Dr Akinwumi Adesina, has been described as a professional whose passion has revolutionised Nigeria’s agricultural sector and boosted food security in the country.

Managing director, Elephant Group Africa, and chairman, Rice Investors Group of Nigeria, Mr Tunji Owoeye, who gave this commendation, also said the minister’s rice policy has taken Nigeria from a net importer to a global exporter of the staple food.

Speaking in an exclusive telephone interview with LEADERSHIP yesterday, Owoeye, who is also the president, Rice Millers and Importers Association of Nigeria, said Adesina’s professionalism and passion for agriculture has not only impacted on food security but has led to an upsurge in the development of the nation’s agricultural sector.

He maintained that “the many policies driven by the minister are revolutionary and are positively affecting the lives of all Nigerians from the very lowly to the most highly placed,” adding that “if Nigeria continues to have such people placed in leadership positions, Nigeria will definitely be the better for it.

“The minister is a professional and has been in the forefront of the Agricultural Transformation drive of the present administration in the past four years and, believe me, we have never seen this kind of professionalism and passion; it has impacted positively on the nation’s food security.”

Reacting to the alleged waiver given by the minister to some companies, he said the minister could not have granted waiver to any company as there were about four or five parameters which qualified a company to benefit from the waiver, which milling capacity, production capacity among others.

“The process has nothing to do with the minister. The thing is Nigeria is a huge nation and different people have diverse interests, and no matter how good a person is, you cannot satisfy everybody.”

Speaking on the minister’s current ambition to run for the presidency of the African Development Bank (AfDB) Owoeye posited that “there is no better candidate to run for the office because of Akinwumi’s passion for food security in Nigeria and Africa as a whole.

“In his position as the minister of agriculture and rural development in the past four years, there is no doubt that Akinwumi has increased Nigeria’s food reservoir from less than one million metric tonnes (1mmtns) to over 20 mmtns, he has unbundled the corruption and issues in the fertiliser sector, making it possible for farmers across the nation to access fertilisers without favour and presented Nigeria’s agriculture globally such that some of us are today benefiting from that.”

He noted that Akinwumi was in good stead to develop Africa’s agro-economy based on his experience as the minister of agriculture in the largest African nation and his economic and multi-lingual background.

“Nigeria and indeed Africa will benefit if Akinwumi is elected the president of the AfDB,” he asserted.

Dr Adeshina ‎is a distinguished agricultural development expert with 24 years of global experience in developing and managing successful agricultural programmes.

He graduated with Bachelors in Agricultural Economics with First Class Honours from the University of Ife, Nigeria (1981) and obtained his PhD in Agricultural Economics in 1988 from Purdue University, USA, where he won the Outstanding PhD Thesis Award for his research work.

The minister, who has a trail of both International and local awards, won the prestigious Rockefeller Foundation Social Science Post-Doctoral Fellowship in 1988, which launched him into an illustrious international career in global agricultural development.

Until his appointment as minister on July 14, 2011, he was the Vice President for the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), set up by the Bill and Melinda Gates and Rockefeller Foundations.

He had been an associate director (Food Security) at the Rockefeller Foundation, New York, where he worked for a decade (1998-2008) in senior leadership positions, including as regional office director and representative for Southern Africa. He was principal economist and social science research coordinator for the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) from 1995 to 1998.

Adesina was also principal economist and coordinator of the West Africa Rice Economics Task Force at the West Africa Rice Development Association (WARDA) from 1990-1995. He was an assistant principal economist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) from 1988-1990. He was the president of the African Association of Agricultural Economists from 2008-2010.

He has received over a dozen global awards for his leadership and work in agriculture. In 2007, he was awarded the prestigious YARA Prize in Oslo, , for his leadership in pioneering innovative approaches for improving access of farmers in Africa to agricultural inputs. He was awarded the Borlaug CAST Award in 2010 by the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology, USA, for his global leadership on agricultural science and technology.

He was awarded the Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters by Franklin and Marshall College, USA, in 2010, for his global leadership on agriculture and improving the lives and livelihoods of the poor.

In 2010, UN secretary-general Ban ki-Moon appointed Adesina as one of the 17 global leaders to spearhead the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), along with Bill Gates, Prime Minister of Spain and President of Rwanda, among others.

In his position as the minister of agriculture for Nigeria, Adesina has aggressively implemented bold policy reforms including the Growth Enhancement Support Scheme (GES) which is being applauded globally, while many other nations, including the World Bank, have sought his expertise to implement same in other developing and developed countries of the world.