Agricultural Programmes and Food Security in Nigeria (1960-2016): A Historical Overview

Agriculture is important to the sustenance of every society and serves as the back bone of economic development, especially in the provision of adequate and nutritional food for human development and raw materials for industry. Agriculture is critical to achieving national poverty reduction targets and it is still the single most important productive sector in Nigeria aside from oil, often in terms of its share of Gross Domestic Product and in terms of the number of people it employs. Sustainable agricultural development in any country is propelled by agricultural programmes. It is in this light that this paper sets out to examine the historicity of agricultural programmes and food security in Nigeria. The paper traced chronologically different agricultural programmes from 1960 to 2016. These programmes were aimed at improving the level of agricultural production and adequate food security for all. The paper's target and appraisal is whether these agricultural programmes have led to the realization of food security in Nigeria. The research's reliance is on secondary source materials interpreted using historical narrative to analyze agricultural programmes and food security in Nigeria. The paper's submission is aligned to address the findings of the interrogation of agricultural programmes inNigeria.