The All Farmers Association (AFAN), Jigawa Chapter, says the nationwide lingering fuel scarcity will likely affect dry season farming in the state.

The AFAN Chairman in the state, Alhaji Maiunguwa Jaga, made this known in an interview with newsmen in Dutse on Monday.

Jaga said that most of the dry season farmers depended on pumping machines to pump water to their farms.

He explained that the association would wait for three more weeks to see what the government would do to ensure that fuel became available and affordable.

Blackout worsened in Nigeria 10:40 am, Monday after the national grid collapsed.

The Eko Electricity Distribution Company confirmed the incident in a text message to its customers.

“Dear esteemed customer, a system collapse occurred on the national grid at 10:40 am today, leading to outages across our network. We are working on the situation with our TCN partners and will keep you updated.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused.” the text message read.

Last year the grid collapsed four times in eight months February, May, July and August leading to a blackout across the country.

Analysts say it speaks voulmes that all is not well in the sector and urgent attention is needed to revamp it.

As Nigeria advances in its drive for a digital economy, The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has said its smart farming digital platform, under the National Adopted Village for Smart Agriculture (NAVSA) would engage 10 million farmers across the agricultural value chain by the year 2032.

Deputy Manager of department of Digital Economy, NITDA, Lukman Lamid, disclosed this at the launch of a platform, a Mobile App for farmers, held at the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB), Ogun State.

According to Lamid, the App., which is developed by NITDA, is equipped with modern technology such as smart irrigation and smart brooding system, virtual accounts and loan facilities, among others for farmers.

At least 100 students of FUNAAB would be trained on the use of modern technologies for farmers at the five-day event.

He said at the end of the training, each beneficiary would be credited with the sum of N100,000 loan in their virtual account as startup capital for their enterprise.

Lamid disclosed that the platform, which is still at the pilot stage, had engaged more than 600 farmers from Gombe, Jigawa, Ekiti and Ogun states.

The Lekki Deep Seaport, in Lagos state south-west Nigeria will begin full commercial activities by September 2022.

Minister of Transportation Rotimi Amaechi said the Lekki Deep Port will contribute $360 billion to the GDP of the nation in 45 years.

On the need for expansion of the project, the minister said “the need for extension will be understated if we ignore it. Now that there are 5,000 persons we need to have the discussion with the community, we need to have a conversion with the Lagos state government and make provisions for their reorientation.”

The development of Lekki Deep Seaport is expected to help decongest the Apapa Port, which is currently struggling with limited space and poor infrastructure to evacuate laden containers.

Amaechi said “you won’t see that market you see in Apapa and tinka here, everything is automated from the gate till you get here. You will see something close to what you have in Dubai and what you have in Singapore.”

The Port, which is being constructed on 90 hectares of land based on Build, Own, Operate and Transfer arrangement, would comprise of three containers, three liquids, and one dry bulk berths.

It is also expected to have 16.5 meters draught, which is the deepest in Nigeria, and to have a projected capacity of 2 .7 million, twenty-foot equivalent units of containers per annum.