The agricultural sector in Nigeria has experienced a revitalization as Alhaji Muhammad Sabo Nanono, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development has set up a technical committee which would work on the upgrade of agriculture extension services in the country. The aim of the upgrade is to enable Good Agricultural Practice (GAP) and also to stimulate technology in improving the production of food.
The technical committee has therefore been saddled with the task of ensuring that agricultural extension workers are adequately trained for the period of 2 years. The technical committee also has the duty of recommending measures that would revitalize agricultural extension training institutions.
These training institutions would be for the purpose of training 75,000 extension workers after the training modules and practices have been reviewed.
The Technical Committee’s Terms of References are provided as follows:
• to examine proposals submitted and international best practices in extension services and draw key learning points.
• to recommend immediate actionable model of training of 75 ,000 extension workers in 2020.
• to develop a workable framework for engaging and working with the states in the continuous training and retraining of extension services workers.
• to recommend how to integrate and use the national farmers helpline center with 6 zonal centers for real time information dissemination ,updates, feedbacks, and capacity of farmers and relevant stakeholders.
• to developing mechanisms for the implementation of recommendations, including monitoring and evaluation
• to make other recommendation that would help in fast tracking the complete transformation of extension services in Nigeria.