KANO, NIGERIA — In the vast, fertile stretches of Northern Nigeria, where agriculture is both the economic lifeblood and the ultimate survival mechanism, a silent crisis is unfolding in quiet parking lots.
Thousands of high-grade agricultural tractors, ordered from Brazil under a multi-million-dollar bilateral agreement by the Muhammadu Buhari administration, are reportedly sitting idle, gathering dust instead of tilling the soil.
The revelation, brought to the forefront by fiery elder statesman and New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) chieftain, Engr. Buba Galadima, has injected fresh fuel into the growing political friction between the North and the administration of President Bola Tinubu. For critics, the idle fleet is not just an administrative bottleneck; it is proof of a government disconnected from the existential security and economic needs of the agrarian North.
The Bilateral Ghost: What Happened to the Brazilian Deal?
Under the Buhari administration, the federal government launched the “Green Imperative” Programme—a $1.2 billion bilateral agricultural mechanization project backed by the Brazilian government. The deal was supposed to import thousands of tractors, establish assembly plants, and create service centers across Nigeria’s 774 Local Government Areas.
Yet, according to Galadima, the execution of this massive intervention has ground to an absolute halt under the current administration.
“Thousands of tractors ordered from Brazil by Buhari are parked and not distributed to farmers. When northerners say Tinubu is their enemy, people cannot understand that it is because of things like this.” — Engr. Buba Galadima
THE AGRARIAN BOTTLENECK: BRAZILIAN TRACTOR DEAL
┌───────────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ THE PROMISE (BUHARI ERA) │ THE REALITY (TINUBU ERA) │
├───────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ • $1.2B "Green Imperative" │ • Tractors imported but remain locked in │
│ bilateral program. │ government storage facilities. │
│ • 10,000+ tractors to be │ • High bureaucratic inertia and lack of │
│ distributed to local hubs. │ clear distribution guidelines. │
│ • Direct boost to food │ • Farmers resort to manual labor amid │
│ security and youth jobs. │ skyrocketing food inflation. │
└───────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────┘
The Northern Discontent: Why This Transcends Agriculture
In Northern Nigeria, where poverty rates are disproportionately high and food inflation has pushed millions to the brink, agricultural inputs are not mere policy points—they are matters of life and death.
Galadima’s remarks highlight a deeper, simmering political sentiment in the region. Many northern political actors argue that the Tinubu administration’s aggressive economic reforms—such as the removal of fuel subsidies and the float of the Naira—have disproportionately devastated the North, which relies heavily on transport-heavy agricultural logistics.
When vital agricultural assets like thousands of tractors are left to rot in government custody rather than being deployed to combat the looming food security crisis, it feeds the narrative that the federal government is indifferent to the region’s primary economic engine.
The Alternative: The “Obi-Kwankwaso” Blueprint
For opposition strategists and political commentators, the tractor scandal serves as a perfect case study for why Nigeria requires a fundamental structural shift in leadership.
The ongoing conversations around a potential alliance between Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) and Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso of the NNPP are directly anchored on addressing these exact execution failures:
- Kwankwaso’s Agrarian Model: During his tenure as Kano State Governor, Kwankwaso championed direct, grassroots agricultural empowerment, bypassing federal bureaucracy to get tools directly to rural farmers.
- Obi’s “Consumption to Production” Philosophy: A cornerstone of Peter Obi’s economic platform has always been utilizing the vast, uncultivated arable land in the North as Nigeria’s “new oil.” Under an Obi-Kwankwaso framework, leaving thousands of imported tractors idle while importing food would be treated as a severe economic crime.
A Call for Immediate Release
As the agricultural planting season progresses, the pressure on the Ministry of Agriculture and the presidency to account for the parked fleet is mounting.
Civil society organizations and northern farmers’ cooperatives are demanding an immediate audit of the imported machinery, transparent distribution guidelines, and the swift deployment of the tractors to cooperative unions across the country. Until the wheels of these tractors start turning in the fields of the North, they will remain a monument to bureaucratic waste—and a potent political weapon for an opposition eager to prove that the current administration is failing the grassroots.
