Stakeholders in the financial and agricultural sectors have called for a major shift toward structured, patient capital to strengthen Nigeria’s agribusiness value chain and drive non-oil export growth.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of the 5th FirstBank Agric & Export Expo in Lagos on Wednesday, key industry leaders emphasised that traditional short-term commercial loans are inadequate for agricultural financing. They noted that aligning credit structures with planting, harvest, and processing cycles remains critical to turning farming into a globally competitive business.
Addressing delegates, Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, represented by the Commissioner for Agriculture and Food Systems, Ruth Olusanya, stressed that unlocking the nation’s true economic strength requires financial institutions to adapt to the unique operational realities of agribusinesses.
“A good harvest without financing cannot become a good business, and a good product without access to markets cannot become a successful export. Our financing structures must recognise the realities of agriculture, including planting and harvest cycles, rather than imposing conventional short-term financing models on long-term agricultural businesses. This is an area where institutions such as FirstBank can make a transformative difference,” Sanwo-Olu said.
Sanwo-Olu further urged financial institutions and agro-processors to prioritise local value addition, warning that raw commodity exports limit economic prosperity.
“If you produce and just export raw, you remain perpetually broke. You add value to it, you determine the global price. Cassava should not leave Nigeria only as cassava, and cocoa should not leave our shores only as raw beans,” Sanwo-Olu added.
Reaffirming the lender’s commitment to supporting the sector, Chief Executive Officer of FirstBank Group, Olusegun Alebiosu, stated that the bank is shifting its operational focus from high-level conversations to targeted execution and capital deployment.
“Our objective is not only to showcase opportunities within agriculture and exports but also to facilitate the connections, partnerships, financing solutions, market access opportunities, and knowledge exchange required to transform ideas into thriving enterprises. Over the years, this Expo has evolved into a leading platform for conversations and collaborations that advance Nigeria’s agricultural and non-oil export sectors,” Alebiosu said.
Highlighting the macroeconomic perspective, FirstBank Chief Economist, Chinwe Egwim, noted that despite agriculture contributing over 20 per cent to Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product, the sector generates just 4.1 per cent of total merchandise export earnings.
“When a sector that is contributing as high as 20 per cent to total GDP is only contributing about 4.1 per cent to merchandise trade, that creates compelling growth opportunities. Capital becomes more powerful when it connects these opportunities rather than treating each part of the value chain in isolation. Financing additional production has greater commercial impact when there is sufficient capacity to aggregate, to store, or to process that output,” Egwim said.
She advised agricultural exporters to shift from a commodity-first approach to a market-led strategy, designing products around international buyer specifications, certification needs, and supply reliability.
Consul-General of Brazil in Lagos, Ronaldo Vieira, also shared insights from Brazil’s two-century agricultural transformation, noting that sustainable agro-export expansion relies on integrated collaboration between public policy, research bodies, private finance, and farmers.
In their separate remarks, Ondo State Governor, Lucky Aiyedatiwa, and his Niger State counterpart, Mohammed Umaru Bago, called for a stronger focus on agricultural value chains, food production, and export-oriented investment as Nigeria grapples with food imports, insecurity, and limited processing capacity. They outlined agricultural investment opportunities in their respective states and urged financial institutions and the private sector to move beyond financing primary production.
Aiyedatiwa said Ondo State’s agricultural potential in cocoa, oil palm, cassava, fisheries, aquaculture, and livestock would only translate into prosperity if government and the private sector developed the full value chains around those commodities.
“Comparative advantage alone does not create prosperity. Our responsibility as government is to convert the comparative advantage into competitive advantage,” Aiyedatiwa said.
He said his administration was moving beyond primary production to areas including quality inputs, aggregation, processing, storage, logistics, traceability, standards, financing, and access to domestic and international markets. According to him, government cannot develop agriculture alone and must create conditions that allow farmers, processors, investors, and financial institutions to operate effectively.
“It is a partnership. The role of government is to create an enabling environment in which farmers can produce efficiently, entrepreneurs can innovate, financial institutions can lend with confidence, processors can expand, and investors can deploy capital and generate returns on investment,” he said.
Aiyedatiwa identified insecurity as one of the major constraints to agricultural expansion, saying attacks and other security challenges were limiting farmers’ ability to expand their farms and increase productivity.
“For us in Ondo State, we are dealing with that head-on by mobilising our security outfits,” he said, adding that the state was collaborating with other security agencies to improve safety for farmers.
He also highlighted access to land as another major obstacle to agricultural investment, explaining that the state was working to resolve conflicts arising from the occupation of agricultural and government-reserved land by smallholder farmers while ensuring communities were not excluded from new investments.
“One of the first questions serious agricultural investors ask is, where will I operate the land? We have to devise a means of accommodating them to work side by side with the investors. We cannot chase them out, because they are also adding value one way or the other,” the governor said.
The governor also stressed the importance of meeting changing international standards, particularly for cocoa exports, noting that farmers must demonstrate the origin of their produce and ensure compliance with environmental requirements.
“Ondo State is Nigeria’s leading cocoa-producing environment, but producing cocoa is no longer enough,” he added.
Bago, meanwhile, warned that Nigeria’s dependence on food imports was unsustainable and called for a deliberate national policy to prioritise domestic production and food sovereignty. He revealed that Nigeria had imported food worth more than $3bn in the year, with the figure potentially reaching $4bn before the end of the year.
“It is scary. First of all, the global market. We need to have a local market. We need to feed ourselves. Food sovereignty is very paramount,” Bago said.
The Niger governor linked increased agricultural production with efforts to address insecurity, describing food as a primary solution. He pointed to Brazil’s agricultural sector, particularly its Mato Grosso and Goiás regions, as an example of the scale of production Nigeria should aspire to achieve.
“One of the panaceas for insecurity is food first. When you do agriculture, you solve your problems,” he said.
Bago stressed the need to strengthen agricultural research and seed production, arguing that weak research institutions had undermined productivity across the country.
“We have 64 research institutes in Nigeria on different crops. None is functional. No funding,” he said, citing the decline in ginger production in Kaduna following the introduction of an infested foreign seed. “We must be able to produce our own seeds.”
He added that Niger State was establishing its own seed-production capacity while calling for agriculture and production to receive greater priority in Nigeria’s financial and monetary framework, noting that no bank was currently willing to support their financing target for the upcoming year.
Speaking on the need to place proper value on agriculture, Bago disclosed that a graduate working on his farm earns a minimum wage of N500,000, calling for the promotion of practical agriculture in the Nigerian education system rather than an overemphasis on academic certificates.
The two-day expo brought together over 2,000 participants and 100 exhibitors, focusing on strategies to enhance cold-chain logistics, storage capacity, and trade linkages under the African Continental Free Trade Area.
