The Federal Ministry of Livestock Development has trained 100 small-scale dairy farmers in Ibadan on dairy best practices, as the Federal Government steps up grassroots efforts to build the value chain underpinning Nigeria’s ambition to double domestic milk production by 2030.
Mr. Idris Ajimobi, the Senior Special Assistant to President Bola Tinubu on Livestock Development, said at the training that real transformation in the dairy sector starts at the farm level, not in policy documents.
“As we continue to push for self-sufficiency in livestock production, initiatives like this remind us that real transformation begins with empowering farmers at the grassroots,” he said.
The training is part of a broader government push aligned with the National Livestock Growth Acceleration Strategy (NL-GAS 2025-2035), which targets lifting the livestock sector’s contribution to Nigeria’s economy from $32 billion to $74 billion by 2035.
Nigeria committed in June 2025 to doubling annual milk output to 1.4 million metric tons by 2030, with private sector backing.
The challenge is considerable: Nigeria’s annual dairy consumption is estimated at nearly 2 million metric tons, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, meaning the country’s production still falls well short of what its population drinks.
Dr. Florence Kalulu, Oyo State Coordinator of the Federal Ministry of Livestock Development, told participants that the government understands the sector’s problems clearly enough to name them. Low productivity, poor animal health management, inadequate hygiene practices, and limited access to modern techniques are the four barriers she identified.
Left unaddressed, she said, they will keep limiting the profitability, quality, and safety of locally produced milk, regardless of how many policy frameworks the government announces above the farm level.
“Real impact happens when knowledge reaches the farmer, when skills are upgraded, and when farmers are supported to adopt better practices,” Dr. Kalulu said. “We expect you to become ambassadors of good practices within your communities.”
Mrs. Racheal Eyitayo-Ariori, President of the Women in Dairy Production Association (WIDPA), welcomed the government’s attention to the sector and called for greater inclusion of women in dairy production.
She noted that Oyo State is a key agricultural state in the South-West and said that when small dairy farmers receive support, the benefits move outward across the wider economy.
One participant, Mr. Moyosore Olatunde, who said he has been dairy farming for 13 years, pressed for a different kind of investment: younger entrants. “We need the younger ones to bring more innovative ideas, and such can speedily happen when the government supplies them with the necessary needs,” he said.
The training is not taking place in isolation. NL-GAS is structured around ten strategic pillars, which include value chain development, animal health, feed and fodder production, finance, data systems, and empowerment of women and youth, with the European Union and the FAO committed to support in areas like animal health, feed production, and disease control.
The Ibadan event fits within that framework, but it also exposes the gap between the strategy’s ambition and the ground-level reality it depends on: farmers who know what they’re doing, with land, inputs, and markets to receive what they produce.
Since early 2026, Nigeria has stepped up cooperation with foreign partners to expand dairy production capacity through knowledge transfer in genetic improvement, better production practices, and the adoption of new technologies. Monday’s training in Ibadan is the domestic face of the same effort.
AgriAxis.ng has previously reported on Nigeria’s 74 billion dollars livestock economy target and the NL-GAS donor coordination framework.
Nigeria consumes nearly 2 million metric tons of dairy annually but produces far less. The gap is what Monday’s training in Ibadan was designed, one farmer at a time, to close.
