Agriculture was of great importance to Nigeria’s economy in the 1960s (Omorogiuwa, Zivkovic and Ademoh, 2014). During this period, Nigeria was noted among world economies for exportation of crops such as shelled groundnuts, cocoa, palm oil, cotton, etc. Aside from revenue generation from the exportation of cash crops, an average Nigerian looked well fed (Edoka, Otajele and Adejo, 2011) because, food production was also at sufficient level despite the use of the  traditional means (hoes and cutlasses) by the local producers of these crops. In buttressing the above point, Adesina (2012) noted that Nigeria accounted for 42% of the world’s total export of shelled groundnuts with a total export volume of 502,000 metric tonnes (MT) in 1961. According to him, with 167,000MT which accounts for 27% of the world’s export of palm oil, Nigeria was the largest producer of palm oil in 1961. In the discussion of the glory of Nigerian agriculture in 1960s, cocoa farmer  were noted for wealth in the early years of independence as Nigeria accounted for 18% of the global export volume for cocoa in 1961 (Adesina, 2012). This enviable position of the Nigerian agriculture was lost due to neglect of te sector as soon as the discovery of oil in the country. Now, Nigeria cannot boast of exporting significant quantities of these crops. In fact, local food production is not sufficient to feed her teeming population. In 2008, Nigeria could not import shelled groundnut due to the incidence of aflatoxin which the country could not fix (Adesina, 2012). With respect to palm oil, Nigeria’s export declined to 25,000MT in 2008 leaving Nigeria far behind Malaysia that took oil palm seedling from Nigeria to her country while Nigeria’s share of the global market for export of cocoa dropped to 8% also by 2008.

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