Senator Abubakar Kyari, minister of Agriculture and Food Security took a long expected step this week, when he launched the deployment of the 2000 tractors, which were delivered to Nigeria in the middle of 2025. The step came days after the National Assembly raised questions on the tractors. The lawmakers had during the defence of the budgetary allocation to the ministry asked the minister of state in the ministry, Dr. Aliyu Abdullahi what the ministry had done with the tractors and when they would be made available for farmers to use.
It is not certain if the step taken by the ministry was motivated by the action of the federal lawmakers or it was just a coincidence. The tractors were delivered with 9000 precision implements last year and unveiled at a ceremony chaired by President Bola Tinubu. Stakeholders in the agriculture sector said then that it was a major milestone in recent time. But long after the delivery had wet the appetite of farmers the tractors remained locked in somewhere with the hope of using them to advance the pursuance of food security held in abeyance. The probing questions by the lawmakers appeared to have forced the hands of the ministry officials to respond to the needs of the farming population. But not all the tractors are being deployed yet.
Abubakar said the tractors will be deployed in phases. According to him,the first phase will comprise 600 tractors. He said, “This first tranche of 600 tractors marks the beginning of a phased acceleration. This will be followed by 750 tractors and 650 tractors, culminating in a nationwide force of 2,000 mechanisation assets.”
Though he said the volume of application for the 600 tractors, about 100,000 applications, was a demonstration of confidence in the leadership, the minister did not seem to recognise that to show the level of the thirst for the implements. The minister who did not give the time for the deployment of the next phases of the tractors assured that the tractors will not lie idle but be used to multiply productivity. He said, “In line with Mr. President’s vision that scale must drive impact, these tractors are not distributed for private ownership. They are entrusted to Mechanisation Service Providers, where each tractor, with the capacity to service approximately 600 hectares per year, becomes not just a machine but a multiplier of productivity.
“Many of these MSPs are youth- and women-led enterprises operating under a lease-to-own model. This is not just about 2,000 beneficiaries. It is about 1.2 million farmers across over 1.5 million hectares annually. It is about national food sovereignty.”
Kyari disclosed that government would not just deploy tractors, it will also assist farmers to get finance through a collaboration involving the Bank of Industry, BoI. While assuring that “each tractor deployed today comes with two years of free service support. We are institutionalising maintenance culture, genuine parts replacement, asset longevity, and disciplined performance management,” the minister did not indicate whether the maintenance period would be calculated from the date they are deployed or from the time the delivery was taken last year.
