Transforming the Nigerian Agricultural Sector into an Agribusiness Model – the Role of Government, Business, and Society

This paper proposes that the transformation of the agric sector into an agribusiness model will contribute to repositioning Nigerian economy from its backwater position in the world’s economy. This proposition was investigated with the help of a review of literature and analysis of secondary time series data from the period of 2005–2014, which represented the contributions of the agricultural, manufacturing, oil and gas, and service sectors in Nigeria. One hypothesis was formulated and investigated with the t-test, correlation, and regression tests. The test results were positive and statistically significant at.05 alpha level, and they showed that agriculture has the potential to consistently have a significant effect in contributing to the growth of the Nigerian GDP both in the short and long run. These results justify the clarion call within the government and business sectors to diversify the economy and return to agriculture as the country’s bedrock for economic stability, especially as global economy becomes more volatile, uncertain, turbulent, and ambiguous. To this end, six strategies and twelve policy recommendations are suggested towards the implementation of a Structural Adjustment for Agribusiness Promotion (SAFAP) in Nigeria, and this is to be implemented as an action plan for pursuing a nationwide agricultural revolution. The paper concludes that, in view of its Vision 20:2020 to be among the top twenty economies in the world, Nigeria can become positioned to be a major player in global economy by diversifying from an oil-dependent economy into agribusiness and agric trade.