Cornelius Adebayo is the Executive Secretary/CEO of the National Agricultural Land Development Authority (NALDA), where he spearheads initiatives to enhance agricultural productivity and sustainability in Nigeria. A seasoned engineer, he holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Howard University, Washington, D.C., and has a background in government relations, market expansion, and private-sector development. With a dynamic leadership style, Adebayo is committed to unlocking Nigeria’s vast agricultural potential by championing modern farming techniques and innovations, empowering smallholder farmers, and strengthening food security. In this exclusive interview with the Abuja BusinessDay team led by John Osadolor, Managing Editor; Onyinye Nwachukwu, Abuja Bureau Chief; and Ladi Patrick-Okwoli, he shares his bold vision of revolutionising agriculture through smart farming, sub-national involvement, and the establishment of mega farm estates to encourage increased participation in agribusiness.
Talk us through the vision and mandate of NALDA
NALDA stands for the National Agricultural Land Development Authority. The agency was established in 1992, but President Olusegun Obasanjo scrapped it or would I say, merged it into the then Ministry of Agriculture, known now as Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. Our core mandate is to encourage land-scale agricultural development, provide land development in the agricultural sector, in terms of land clearing, preparation, education facilities, infrastructure, storages, access roads, partitioning of lots, encouraging food production and also improving the production for export. These are the core areas of NALDA.
We are still growing as an agency. NALDA was brought back in 2020 and operations started in 2021. So we are four years old now. We are retracing what has been done, and what we met on ground. There were records of so many plantations, homes, investments, land allocations which we are trying to locate where they are and then improve, and replace for those that are too old. So we decided to start from the point of looking back. We have engaged consultants within and outside the country. We have a 10-year plan which maps out our strategy in three phases – short-term, mid-term, and long-term goals. This is so that incase I’m not here tomorrow, whatever I started can continue. It’s been tough, but there is nothing that cannot be handled.
That said, NALDA deals with the local constituency, the grassroots the most, we are meant to operate in the 774 local governments in Nigeria. Our Act mandates us to have offices in the 36 states of the federation. We also have committees in every local government. That Act also encourages state governments to have the State and Cultural Development Authority. We’ve been engaging state governors, some are already indicating interest, like Benue, Ekiti and Edo States who have commenced the process of setting up Development Agencies. This is important because you cannot develop food without a sub-national committee. We are encouraging a system where the states can align with what we are doing.
Since I came on board, getting the right record of what happened in the past, including resistance from some of the farmers that are on existing plantations have been key challenges. These people have been harvesting on these lands for the past 15, 20 years without anybody disturbing them. So, when the government comes to say this is our plantation, it becomes a problem. Mind you, we are not going to take anything from them but some of these plantations need maintenance, proper pruning of the trees to create a proper access road within the plantation, which are normally huge.
The infrastructure within those settlements and plantations also need to be maintained, which is why we are insisting that things must be done properly. First of all, have a proper record of all the farmers – are they registered as farmers, do they have National Identification Numbers and all that, especially to enable them access government’s incentives? We are trying to synergize a lot of things, pass the message across to the communities that we are here to help, work with them to improve on what they are doing, track output from these places, what is coming in and going out through our borders and then plan properly.
Tell us more about the 10-year strategy plan?
I may not be able to give you details about the 10-year strategic plan because Mr President has yet to approve it. But the summary of it is that from now we have to do a lot of land clearing in phase one which is our short term goal and also provide temporary housing in our farm settlements and so on. Then we have to be strategic in our mid-term plan, looking at the things that we import and export, the crops we have to support, looking at our own plantations and reviving them, improving production.
Why don’t we just improve our tonnage for cocoa, cashew, sesame, and maybe Arabica to impact our foreign exchange? In Côte d’Ivoire, cocoa is now at about 2.2 million tons annually. Their dollar earnings from cocoa almost match our earnings from oil and gas. Why are we putting so much emphasis on oil and gas when we can make so much from Cocoa?
There is a Cocoa Revitalization Plan coming up, not just Cocoa but Cash Crops Revitalization Plan that Mr President is bringing on board. We are still on the drawing board – putting finishing touches, and it covers a lot of areas.
Some countries depend on just Cashews and we have Cashew and Cocoa, we want to abandon it? The Value of Cocoa as at today is $14 million per ton, if you calculate this amount you can imagine the impact for our farmers and in our rural areas. We need to seriously encourage and improve the production of Cocoa and this starts with land preparation. We are looking at it from two angles. We have done our math and seen that for most crops, if you plant less than five hectares, it might not be able to take you out of poverty. And this is why a lot of international support programs here have not really lifted a lot of people because they want to impact as many people as possible.
At NALDA we are saying a minimum of five heaters, with that, farmers can achieve something meaningful. My purpose is not to empower 1 million farmers. I would rather empower 10,000 farmers because I will not come back to them next year. We need to create the much-needed middle class that is lacking in the country, and NALDA is positioned to do that. We can reach the most vulnerable. We can truly reach the grassroots, empower both women and youth. Imagine 5,000 hectares of farmland supporting one million people, each earning ₦3 million annually. The economic transformation of these individuals would be profound, rippling beyond the farmers themselves to reshape entire communities. So, rather than focusing on large, arbitrary numbers, we must measure real impact in terms of how many lives we can meaningfully transform.
The core mandate of NALDA is agricultural land clearing and expansion. What are the current plans and strategies and the volume of land cleared so far?
When I resumed at NALDA last year, I did not inherit one bulldozer, however Mr President has assured us to support us this year. We are still growing as an agency. NALDA has been restructured and we have our goals, pretty much focused on modern-day smart, mechanised farming. This is to encourage increased participation and of course food production because a lot of people don’t want to return to the farms. We believe that this will encourage people to return to the farms because if you were handling one hectare using your cutlass and hoe, you should be more encouraged now that we are bringing you into a cluster where we have prepared the land, de-stoned, cleared, munched, we pretty much have done everything for you – there are tractors for you to use, there is financing for your input, what will stop you? So the farmer is then just like a lot manager, things are easy. This is our goal, which we are pursuing vigorously, unlike the previous system where there are no labourers, no equipment.
Recently, the Minister of Agriculture announced additional 2000 tractors which came in from Belarus. There’s more coming in from Jordan, and other places. When NALDA prepares the land, it is easy to monitor and clusterise the farmers, deploy them to produce with the facilities we are providing. This means that all the programs can now run on properly orchestrated and cleared clusters in a coordinated manner. For instance, we have The Irrigate Nigeria Project. We have NASENI also doing some irrigation projects. This means that it’s easy for NALDA to give NASENI the list of farmers on irrigation for deployment or to ask Nigerian Commodity Exchange NCX to aggregate when they are done, harvest and collect. We can then put some in our national strategic grain storage, and distribute some to major producers as input.
Just recently, a manufacturer came to complain that his factory needs 54,000 tons of maize annually to run, and he cannot even find maize to buy. The factories are in Ilorin and Ogbomosho. His business is about to collapse because there’s no feedstock. Those are the sort of interventions that NALDA is doing. Immediately, I called my team to do the calculations to know how many hectares he will need, and we realized he needs about 10,000 hectares cultivated. The next question we asked ourselves was where are the funds? Then we understand that there are ways we can structure these things to bring in private sector involvement. We looked at the possibility of getting investors who can take the risk of financing these farmers to produce food in large quantities. These are the kind of roles that NALDA is now playing to see how we can structure things in a different way. We can’t all sit and wait for budgetary allocation. There’s also a company in Ekiti State called Promise Point, which is the first intervention I did just two days after I resumed office. The manufacturer also complained that her cassava factory in Ekiti was about to close down because there’s no feedstock. She needed cassava, but has about 1000 hectares of land. Immediately we moved to the site. I think we have cleared an excess of 400 hectares out of the 1000. We have about eight of NALDA tractors there now preparing for her.
The idea is, once we have done the land preparation, she can provide the labour and the cassava input, then we produce and deduct our own cost. She just pays us for the mechanization part and she has enough cassava to feed her factory. That way, we keep jobs, our factories working and we improve our economy. Apart from just producing food for people, we have to actually save a lot of factories which are shutting down because there is no feedstock. So the importance of NALDA can never be over emphasized, and knowing our place and where to intervene is important. That is why people write to us everyday expressing their willingness to partner with us as an agency, because they have seen our direction, focus, and that we can be of great help. As Nigerians we need to show these models and leadership. There are so many resources, funds that are sitting in places that have not been used, yet resources are needed to produce things that we need in the country to reduce importation. These are some of the interventions that we are embarking on at NALDA. And with the support we are getting from Mr President, we strongly believe that in no time, we will be able to impact so many businesses and the economy.
There are so many agro allied companies across the country that are lagging behind. Look at what is going on in the Fish and Poultry industry, because the feeds are so expensive, a lot of them are closing down. When I assumed office, I asked these questions, where are our existing livestock facilities? Where is the closest land? Can we produce what we need to feed those livestock from these lots? I realized that NALDA has a lot of cattle scattered everywhere. Logistics wise, it was costing a lot of money to maintain all the livestock. We moved the cattle to the coastal centralized area like Yobe State. Then we asked ourselves what land we have in Yobe? What can we plant? Napier grass, super napier, alfalfa, whatever, to feed them. What irrigation facilities? How many bore holes do we have? Can I irrigate? Then, apart from that, where else do I have Napier – in Adamawa? How big? Can we cut from Adamawa to extend or plant more? When we keep livestock, we should be able to think about how to feed them. The fishes I have in Adamawa, catfish that I have in my ponds, we have to make sure that we grow their food needs for the year, other than buying and importing and losing jobs. So it starts from ours, it grows to support other poultry and fish ponds around that area. From there, we can move to the phase of strategic partnerships – it might be NALDA or whatever joint venture, but we know that because the government is involved, we can help keep this thing at a reasonable level because we need our people to feed.
Can we know where the cleared lands are located?
We’ve done a partnership in Ekiti – about 400 hectares. We’ve cleared another 400 hectares on NALDA land, which is where the Renewable Project is ongoing. We’ve clarified 500 hectares in Kwara, all these between July and now. We are looking to at least achieve 200,000 hectares this year which will be a good start. Next year, we’ll continue.
Are those lands already in use?
For most of those places that we cleared, we have not really started planting. Some of the contractors are even still submitting their completion certificates.
What we are planning to do this year is to onboard the farmers, call in our partners. NIMC will register the farmers and capture them. While we are doing that, we will provide hostels within those settlements so that in there, we can have extension workers, agronomists who manage these places properly and that farmers are not just doing what they like, provide facilities like a small town hall where development partners like IITA, GIZ can come in and organize trainings for the farmers. We will include a financial center where they can use ATMs and the internet because we want a futuristic kind of thing. You don’t want to take our people backwards.
How do you aggregate the farmers who can participate in this cluster?
We have realized that we cannot do this without the sub- nationals, so we involved the state governments and state ministries of agriculture, including farming associations within that area. We call in different farmer cooperative societies that are available there. Some of the communities that donated the land in the first place will have the first right of refusal because I cannot donate 5,000 hectares and you go get farmers from elsewhere. We will then tell you the requirements, your name, number of family members, age, years of farming, crops you cultivate. This will help us in planning and have an idea of what the farmer can produce based on these data. These are the modalities that we are using to select and screen farmers to participate in this cluster, because we want optimum results.
We are taking it a step back to say, when you cultivate five hectares and you are earning maybe N8 million, whatever the number is annually, you should not be seen as a smallholder farmer anymore. We should help you with financial literacy, ensuring you are registered as a family enterprise with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC). You employ people and pay their salary. You can imagine the ripple effect. That is how we will build those small businesses that we are looking for. Those are the family enterprises that will later invest, buy the stocks of BOI, for instance, because they now have the training that they are a business and not just a farmer.
Can you provide an update and impact of the mega farm estates?
There has been profound progress in this project. The mega-farm project will revolutionise the agricultural landscape in Nigeria. These lands were properly surveyed and planned. The idea is that we trench around to provide perimeter security.
After trenching, we provide patrol routes so that security agents can drive around. They will now have their farmlands, settlements. So, everyone farming within the cluster is settled there. There is a store for inputs, an administrative block, etc. If you harvest, you are coming to this store to drop off. There is a mechanization center, there are tractors, hostels, market, everything you need. If a farmer is allocated 5,000 hectares, you can use five percent of that and grow what you want, but the remaining 95 percent will be used for one commodity. The idea is, if everyone around here is growing maize, it is easy to check them and maintain standard. The aggregation is easy, and direct to specific use. When you have large estates like this, you can decide, allocate. Let’s say, whatever the estate in Kogi, or in Taraba for instance, is producing will go to Flour Mills or Nestle. With this, you can reduce the pressure, the interference in the market, it makes it quite organized. Over time, we will be able to achieve price stability, decency, organization in the market and everything will come into play.
Will these interventions and facilities be available to the farmers for free?
Not everything is free. For example, mechanization, you don’t pay upfront, but you will pay because agriculture is a business. What the government is doing is to encourage farmers. Most farmers will say they don’t have money for tractors, to clear the land, NALDA or any other mechanization partner will clear it if appointed to work there. Let us say we know your EOP for maize, then you submit your enterprise details. If you submit an application to say a sister agency like Agri-Development Fund or Bank of Industry or Bank of Agriculture directly, they will disburse to the farm company managing the cluster. They will buy the premium seeds, the inputs, fertilizers and everything. And, from these mini warehouses, the farmers will login and collect the items, sign and get documented.
We are building a model electronic system. So your account will show the services rendered and inputs collected so that when you go to the aggregator, like the Nigeria Commodity Exchange or any other one, it will show what you have collected because they also have access to the backend of the system. They will check and see what has been provided and they will pay you the difference. The farmers will pay back every service rendered to them. They might pay a little token to stay in the hostels, but the end goal is that there is enough land and space for us to bring in the family homes. If you want a two or three bedroom bungalow, the deduction will be made during the annual harvest periodically to offset the loan. Even services like smart solar electricity will be billed and collected annually since everybody knows the rate. They are not looking for resources to get things done, the government has provided these services through private sector partnership to make life easy, so that farmers can produce what we eat.
With multiple agencies involved, do you foresee bureaucratic hurdles?
No, there won’t be bureaucracy because the agencies that we are working with are proactive. This is evident in the number of MoUs I have signed without experiencing government bureaucracy. Everyone wants to deliver in good time because of their trust in the administration of President Bola Tinubu and his Renewed Hope Agenda. The synergy and sincerity of purpose is also there. As people who are ready to build institutions, we are already doing a ten-year plan, as our blueprint which is to ensure that whoever takes over from me, has a clear direction to follow.
In specific terms, how is NALDA keying into the Renewed Hope Restoration Project?
The Renewed Hope Restoration Project is very important to me and Mr President because it touches on the vulnerable. And it’s because of these kinds of drastic interventions by the government that food prices are gradually coming down. There are women and others who have been displaced from their farm lands. We are trying to restore these people by ensuring that lands are allocated to them. It might not be as big as the mega farm settlement, but we are helping them rebuild their lives. We will achieve this through support from international organisations that are giving them seeds and supporting their feeding.For us, this is the biggest story. We are fast moving from an IDP nation to one that has settled its displaced persons, we are following the path of economic prosperity and growth.
The Renewed Hope Restoration project is very dear to us and that is why we are partnering with the National Commission for Refugees and Migrants. They are the custodians of displaced persons and data. We have the land and agriculture experience, that’s synergy. We also work with security agencies to resettle these people. We are also working with some state governments in this regard. The Benue State government is doing a similar project. I was there with UNDP for the inauguration and they invited us to expand it. The Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs is heading the project because the Commission for Refugees and Migrants is under the ministry. The minister is working round the clock to collect the data of our farmers to settle these groups of persons to enable them build back their lives. What will give me joy is to see that people who previously depended on some aid organisations to survive are able to stand on their own. I am sure we will be able to achieve this in the next two years because building a sustainable government takes time. We are appealing to Nigerians to be a little more patient, as this is not a short term project. It will last beyond this administration.
How are you working with state governments to access lands?
The governors have been very supportive. My state governor (Kwara State) is the chairman of the governors’ forum. At the state level, he has been very supportive. Most governors give land willingly when asked. The NALDA Act is clear, we are supposed to interact with state and local governments, and communities for land donation. In some cases, the communities donate to NALDA because they know that their people will benefit from it. We then carry out a survey and write to the state government that this community is willing to donate this land to NALDA for some years for cultivation because the Act does not permit us to pay compensation or buy land. The NALDA Act is very clear, it says NALDA must not pay for land, and no party must pay on behalf of it. The indigenes still own it, we are only taking possession to manage it for them. We are just creating an enabling environment for the people of the community.
Can you take over these lands permanently?
No, the state government can allocate these lands out rightly, but you know that Certificate of Occupancy for farms is usually shorter compared to building of structures.
When you have a 15-year tenure on land, it is bankable, even if you go and lease land for 15 years, the bank can support you based on that. It is not like a house, however. That is why when you have a long tenure, and you document it with the state government, you are protected. Ours is to stimulate the economy for a period and have it running.
NALDA implemented to promote year-round agricultural production?
We are exploring more solutions for irrigation farming. Like I said, we have a project called Irrigate Nigeria running under NASENI. We are also talking to partners to develop different areas for irrigation. I must tell you that is an area that the government is looking at seriously, it is being developed. It is in our mid-term plan because we must have enough land before we can talk about irrigation. Farmers are scattered, how do you accommodate them for irrigation and at what level? We want both the large-scale companies and our small-scale farmers to benefit from these solutions. Our focus now is to bring small scale farmers together. If you look at our Act, we are not ignorant of climate change and the protection of our forests. Under our mandate in forestry, there is also some aspect that talks about forestry. We are developing housing in such a way that when we look back, we are able to say within these years, we have cut these trees and replaced them with Bamboos for instance. We cleared some forests and replaced them with cocoa trees, then we moved to another type of tree, say cashews, palm and so on.
In cases where we plant grains and stuff, we will be responsible enough to replace them with commercial trees, we are looking at this aspect. Some of them are farm estates. Again, our plan is that soon, we will have a discussion about the perspective of mobility for the farm estates, deploying CNG. The tricycle and motorcycles will have to be on CNG. For powering the roads, they will mainly be on solar. We are keeping it eco-friendly, clean energy science. We are not losing sight of it at all. We are keeping that in mind and we are serious about it.
How about rubber plantation?
Rubber plantation will be in phase three.
What constitutes phase one, two and three?
In phase one, we are talking about the most important thing, which is food security. Things like rice, cassava and yam, we have to take care of the belly first. You have to be alive before you use rubber products. I am not saying that rubber is not important. Let us handle the national issue first. Let us make sure there is enough food. While we are doing that, we are also planting tree crops for export like cashew and cocoa. A similar agency transformed Malaysia. They were the ones that took the entire palm kernel sector and encouraged large-scale plantation/ownership. That is the same model we are using. They made it easier for businessmen to get involved. And you can see Malaysia’s position in the palm business. They took the first seed from Nigeria. We have a lot to catch up. Later, we can get to the likes of sesame, in phase one – phase two. Soybeans, soybeans and so on are some of the new crops we are looking at. Of course, when we are balanced, we can now concentrate on rubber and others like timber.
Are there take-off timelines for these phases?
Yes, there is zero to two years in phase one, three to five for phase two and five to ten years for phase three.
Aquaculture plays a vital role in sustainable agriculture, how is NALDA supporting and expanding it across communities?
Aquaculture is very dear to me because I was involved in it before coming here. We understand the importance of working with the ministries because they have the policies. You will be seeing a lot of synergy between the ministries of agriculture, blue economy and livestock. We are starting mega fish villages with food ponds, feed mills, processing facilities with good storage, all in one center, one-stop shop. We also try to locate it where there are other people doing the same business. There are certain areas where you have a lot of people doing aquaculture. If we establish a cluster in this area, it will not only serve those within the cluster, but also benefit the surrounding communities. The quality of feed is crucial, we can control its quality before distributing. This uniformity in feed will simplify the process, as it all originates from the same source. Having professional and proper storage will benefit the cluster and the surrounding population. Post-harvest challenges, including processing and packaging to international standards are some of the biggest issues we face. When these clusters and facilities are set up, they will be inspected for quality, making it easier to meet export standards. This approach will reduce the rejection rate of Nigerian products in international markets.
In our agricultural focus, we are developing clustered fish farming systems to encourage women to own large, healthy ponds and even set up cages in rivers and dams. This initiative will contribute to reducing Nigeria’s reliance on fish import, as the country currently imports over a million tons of fish annually, while producing 5,000-10,000 tons.
Though this might seem small, distributing 10,000 tons across multiple locations such as Akwa Ibom, producing 30-50 tons, will have a significant impact. If we expand this to other regions like Lagos and beyond, we could scale up production to an additional 100,000 tons in the next two years. Our major goal is to support production efforts by improving soil conditions for fish farming, ensuring that the quality of the fish feed and farming methods contribute to sustainable and profitable outcomes.
How is NALDA leveraging technology to enhance farmers’ productivity and streamline operations?
We are developing what we call the National Agricultural Land Bank. Presently, we do have extensive land records. As a land development agency, NALDA recognizes the importance of maintaining a comprehensive and organized land record system. Therefore, we are establishing a proper land bank using the Geographic Information System (GIS). This is to ensure that we accurately capture and monitor various categories of agricultural land, including River Basin lands, state-owned agricultural lands, and private sector-owned lands exceeding 500 hectares. With this data, we can effectively track land use and development, ensuring informed decision-making. For instance, when selecting a state like Rivers, we should be able to instantly access data on available agricultural land and its potential for development. The system will provide similar insights for all states across the federation, reinforcing the crucial role of data in driving agricultural growth.
What specific strategies is the agency implementing to address its human resource challenges and ensure continued progress?
The agency faces challenges, particularly in human resources, but we have a strong team in place to address it. We continue to make progress, taking one day at a time. As an agency, we are still moving forward and actively reaching out for opportunities.
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