Tinubu Promised ‘Sexy’ Farming, but 2,000 Tractors are Still Gathering Dust in Abuja

If you visit the National Agricultural Seeds Council (NASC) in Abuja today, you’ll see a graveyard of good intentions flooded in its premises. Row after row of 2000 tractors and heavy machinery, imported by the Bola Tinubu administration from Belarus, sitting perfectly aligned, perfectly clean, and perfectly useless.

In June 2025, the Renewed Hope Agricultural Mechanisation Programme was launched, with 2,000 tractors, 10 combine harvesters, 12 mobile workshops, 9,000 farming implements, 9,000 spare parts kits, and a commitment to increase GDP by ₦60 trillion by activating 40 million young “agripreneurs”.

Seven months later, the machines are idle in a parking lot while food prices surge, and they miss a full planting season, resulting in billions in lost productivity.

The minister of agriculture and food security, Abubakar Kyari, had described the project as the country’s biggest mechanisation push, calling it “the single largest mechanisation drive” Nigeria has undertaken.

The ministry’s projections were equally ambitious – to cultivate more than 550,000 hectares, produce over two million metric tonnes of staple food, create more than 16,000 jobs, and directly benefit at least 550,000 farming households. The programme also promised operator training, GPS-enabled equipment tracking, and free allocations to research and training institutions.

The problem is that, with the snail’s pace of things, there is nothing to be optimistic about. This project is already following the path of similar initiatives pursued by successive governments, which were only announced in the newspapers.

While the first batch of tractors arrived in March 2025, just weeks before the rainy season, distribution did not proceed at the pace farmers needed. Nigeria’s wet farming season typically runs from April to October, when most staple crops must be planted.

A Blessing to Farmers or a Curse?

Officials say the equipment is not intended to be distributed as gifts but rather managed through a leasing structure.

According to the ministry, the federal government mandated the Bank of Agriculture (BoA) to oversee distribution. In November 2025, the Bank published a call for applications to lease or acquire equipment on its website and social media channels, months after the tractors had already arrived.

The leasing terms were:

• A 3-5 year lease at 15 per cent interest, with a 25 per cent down payment. (On a tractor valued between ₦28m and ₦50m, this is a prohibitive entry cost for the very youth the programme targets).

• For “youth agripreneurs”, eligibility was pegged to ages 18 to 35.

• 350 hectares of contiguous land (requiring aggregated land excludes the vast majority of smallholder clusters).

By December, the BoA managing director, Ayo Sotinrin, said the bank had received more than 100,000 applications. He said screening was expected to narrow the pool to 4,000 companies, then to 2,000.

Beyond this, the public still lacks the information that is most critical to accountability and impact, including the number of beneficiaries approved, where the machines have been deployed, the number of units in operation, and the hectares actually being cultivated under the scheme.

As things stand, a programme launched with sweeping national targets is operating without a clear public scorecard.

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2,000 Tractors is a Far Cry

This lack of clarity is especially costly because Nigeria’s mechanisation deficit is a measurable drag on productivity.

In its National Agricultural Technology and Innovation Policy 2022–2027, the ministry describes Nigeria’s level of mechanisation as among the lowest in the world.

The policy places Nigeria at 0.027 horsepower per hectare, well below the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s recommendation of 1.5 horsepower per hectare. The same document links the gap to limited access to tractors, harvesters, threshers, processing tools and other farm equipment, a shortage that reduces cultivated land, lowers crop and livestock output, and worsens post-harvest losses.

In March 2024, Kyari told the House of Representatives that Nigeria needs at least 72,000 tractors to properly mechanise farming.

Private-sector analysts estimate the shortfall to be even higher. Rildwan Bello, co-founder and managing director of Vestance, says Nigeria has fewer than 5,000 functional tractors nationwide and less than one tractor per 1,000 hectares. He estimates the country needs roughly 150,000 tractors to support large-scale production. He noted that it is akin to having 1 tractor to serve the 1,032 hectares that constitute the University of Ibadan landmass.

“That’s why you see agricultural students doing their practicals in 2026 with a hoe and a cutlass,” he said.

The deeper point is not just that Nigeria needs tractors. Nigeria repeatedly purchases tractors without addressing the ecosystem that sustains their operation.

Bello’s critique is familiar to anyone who has tracked past agricultural interventions.  When equipment arrives, it’s deployed unevenly, breaks down, and is taken out of productive use because maintenance, spare parts, operator skills, and logistics are treated as afterthoughts.

In his view, the government should cease acting as the direct manager of tractor procurement and instead create conditions for private-sector-led mechanisation, such as supporting businesses in operating and maintaining fleets, subsidising leasing costs to enable farmers to afford services, and developing the technical workforce needed to service machines quickly when they fail.

Population Growth and Missed Opportunities

Nigeria has one of the youngest populations in the world, yet farming continues to carry the stigma of drudgery and low returns. Mechanisation is one of the clearest ways to change that image, replacing exhausting manual labour with modern operations, data, and service models that young people can build businesses around.

ActionAid estimates that engaging 40 million youths in agriculture could add ₦60 trillion to Nigeria’s GDP annually. The organisation also says a one per cent increase in agricultural employment and youth participation could cut poverty by up to 59 per cent.

The federal government has tried to address that opportunity directly. In August, it unveiled the revised 2025–2030 National Youth Manifesto in Agriculture for Nigeria, presented as a youth-owned roadmap, alongside a Nigerian Youth in Agribusiness “Call to Action” meant to put young people at the centre of agricultural transformation.

But young farmers say enthusiasm is not the problem; policy follow-through is. And they are not wrong.

Umar Farouq, a young farmer, argues that agriculture has become more appealing to young people in recent years, with technology playing a larger role than before. He also makes a practical point that not every farming model requires owning a tractor, and many young farmers are making progress without one. What they need is an enabling environment, access to inputs, finance, land, and markets, plus reliable service models they can afford. He questions whether tractor-sharing schemes of the past have delivered real change.

That is the risk now. If the mechanisation programme remains slow, opaque, or concentrated in a few hands, it will harden cynicism among the very youths it was meant to attract.