Vice President Kashim Shettima set up a technical committee on Tuesday, October 20, 2026, to speed up strategic interventions in wheat, other staple crops and livestock, Voice of Nigeria reported. He formed the committee at a high-level meeting on agricultural sector performance at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
The committee is to "cross-pollinate ideas and come up with a blueprint on implementing strategic interventions," Stanley Nkwocha, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Communications in the Office of the Vice President, said in a statement, TVC News reported.
Who Sits on the Committee
Marion Moon, Technical Adviser to the Vice President on Agriculture and Head of the Presidential Food Systems Coordinating Unit, will coordinate the committee. Members include the Federal Ministries of Agriculture and Food Security, Water Resources and Sanitation, and Livestock Development, along with the Ministry of Finance Incorporated, according to Voice of Nigeria.
The chief executives of nine agencies also sit on it: the Bank of Industry, the Bank of Agriculture, the National Agricultural Land Development Authority, the National Agricultural Seeds Council, the National Agricultural Development Fund, the National Centre for Agricultural Mechanisation, the National Sugar Council of Nigeria, the Nigeria Commodities Exchange and the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure.
No deadline was announced. The committee's report will be reviewed by another committee before going to the Vice President and then to President Bola Tinubu, TVC News reported.
Year-Round Farming in Focus
The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, said the meeting examined the problems farmers face, wheat expansion and dry-season farming. He said Tinubu, who met agriculture and other sector stakeholders the previous week, had directed the Vice President to address challenges affecting year-round farming. "Mr. President had always encouraged the all-year-around farming," Kyari said, according to TVC News.
Kyari described the body's role: "It is a technical committee with members from the various MDAs to sit and coordinate on behalf of all." Moon said: "it is very important to ensure that we are in harmony and synergy with what is happening at the state level," Voice of Nigeria reported.
Wheat Output Still Small
The federal government says domestic wheat production has risen to about 420,000 metric tonnes a year, the Minister of State for Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, said in a World Food Day statement on October 16, 2026. Nigeria still relies heavily on imports. A USDA Foreign Agricultural Service forecast, reported by MillingMEA on October 9, 2026, put Nigeria's wheat imports for 2026/27 at about 5.6 million tonnes.
FoodPrices Nigeria tracks Golden Penny Flour and other staples across Lagos markets. Wider domestic wheat output would show up there as a smaller import bill feeding into flour and bread prices.
Editor Notes (do not publish): The USDA import forecast reached me through MillingMEA, not the USDA report itself, and the underlying USDA report appears to date from March 2026. If you prefer, drop that sentence; the article stands without it. TVC and Voice of Nigeria differ slightly on wording around the President's meeting; I used wording common to both. All quotes came through a page summary tool, so check them word for word.