Nigeria’s Federal Government has launched a nationwide agricultural curricula review, signalling a long-overdue shake-up of how agriculture is taught in polytechnics and colleges of education across the country. The move targets a system that has, by the government’s own admission, been left to gather dust for well over a decade.
The Agriculture Curriculum Review Implementation Committee Chairman, Prof. Idris Bugaje, made the announcement on Monday in Abuja at a two-day national workshop convened specifically for the exercise. Bugaje, who also serves as Executive Secretary of the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE), said many agricultural programmes had gone unchanged for more than 15 years, a reality that has made them unattractive to young Nigerians and increasingly out of step with what the industry actually needs.
The Nigeria agricultural curricula review will cover all 33 National Diploma and Higher National Diploma agricultural programmes, along with over 32 National Occupational Standards. Four thematic groups, covering crops and agronomy, livestock, fisheries, and forestry, will develop implementation timelines and identify industry resource persons to drive the process forward.
Bugaje did not mince words about the consequences of neglect. Admissions into agricultural programmes have been declining, he said, because the content on offer no longer reflects current realities. He also raised the issue of chronic underfunding, noting that as little as N50 million was previously allocated annually to review more than 320 curricula and over 100 occupational standards, a figure he described as grossly inadequate.
8The Executive Secretary of the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE), Dr. Angela Ajala, backed the push, saying Nigeria must urgently shift agricultural education from theory to hands-on practice. She pointed to a decline in trained extension officers and technical farm experts as evidence that the current approach was failing. “If Nigeria must secure its agricultural future, training must move from classroom theory to practical competence,” she said.
The Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria (ARCN), represented by Dr. Oluwafemi Salako, pledged technical support for the process. The council oversees 19 national agricultural research institutes and 17 federal colleges of agriculture. An international expert from the Sector Skills Council for Agriculture, Pascal Durand-Carrier, added that ongoing skills-gap surveys, conducted with international partners, would help align Nigeria’s training outcomes with global labour market demands.
The review will focus on programmes under NBTE and NCCE supervision. Undergraduate programmes under the National Universities Commission will not be part of this immediate exercise, in line with that body’s five-year review cycle.
Participants at the workshop left optimistic, expressing confidence that a modernised, market-driven Nigeria agricultural curricula review outcome would not only attract more young people into farming but also strengthen the country’s food security prospects.
