According to a news report from The Guardian, the National Centre for Agricultural Mechanisation (NCAM) in Ilorin, Kwara State, has successfully designed a mini-tractor capable of performing all the functions of conventional tractors.

In an interview with The Guardian, AbdulGafar Kamaldeen, the Executive Director of the institute, highlighted the cost-effectiveness of the mini tractor. He emphasized that this innovation aims to address the existing gap in tractor availability within Nigeria’s agricultural sector.

Furthermore, the centre intends to provide a sufficient number of mini tractors to serve all council areas across the federation. This strategic move is expected to enhance Nigeria’s food production capacity and contribute positively to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country.

Kamaldeen said: “The mini tractor is the product of the ingenuity of our staff. It performs every function that the conventional tractor performs. With more facilities, we can rise to the challenges of manufacturing for each of the LGAs in the country. Indeed, Nigeria is blessed with resources and personnel of high qualities.”

The Executive Director added that the centre developed mini tractors while considering the financial constraints posed by the price and size of a conventional tractor on farmers, especially, small and medium scale farmers.

The mini tractors are three and four-wheeled, designed to perform similar operations as a conventional tractor but on a smaller scale. It has been tested in various agro-ecological zones of the country.

The centre, according to Kamaldeen, has equally built the NCAM multi-crop thresher, which is a compact thresher with a multi-crop potential, aimed at increasing threshing efficiency and eliminating diced associated with the traditional method of threshing with stick. The machine has the capacity to thresh rice, sorghum, maize and cowpea.

While regretting the low patronage towards the institutes’ machineries, he urged agric experts, states and local councils to use more of the institute’s manufactured and fabricated facilities.