The role of changes in policy and governance on agricultural growth: A case of fertilizer and cereal production in Nigeria

This paper examined the role of changes in policy and governance on agricultural growth by exemplifying the scenarios of fertilizer policy and cereal production in Nigeria. Specifically, we investigate the trend of changes in fertilizer policy, governance structures, and growth in cereal production, we then examine the effect of the changes in fertilizer policy and governance on cereal production. Basically, secondary data sourced from the World Bank and African Development Bank database for the period of 1996 – 2016 were used for the study. We employed trend analysis and quantitative methods of data analysis to extract salient information from the data harvested. The quantitative analysis includes time-series and panel correlated regression models. The result shows that despite the changes in fertilizer policy and subsidy over the periods, there was no significant improvement in the governance structure prevailing over the periods even though there was a little bit conspicuous increase in the total cereal production over the same period. The amount of fertilizer subsidy was found to have a negative effect on the quantity of cereal production while governance, and Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) were not statistically significant at influencing agricultural production in Nigeria (p.<0.05). However, governance and CPIA policy measures become important factors that influence cereal production at the cross-countries level of measurement. The study, therefore, recommends that the government should strengthen the institutional governance of Nigeria's fertilizer policy process. We suggested that all agricultural institutions and social-economic and policy-driven institutions should be strengthened through effective monitoring system.