A delegate representing the North East zone, Paul Bassi, who advocated for capital punishment for persons convicted of corruption in Nigeria, stressed that given the level of corruption plaguing the country only draconian laws could tame the itchy fingers of public officials.
Bassi, who spoke during discussions on the report of Committee on Agriculture stressed that the volume of public funds stolen every year could have been deployed to funding agriculture.
The Committee on Agriculture and Water Resources had also called for immediate passage of the Bill for the Establishment of the Nigerian Soil Science Institute which it said was pending in the National Assembly, if the current critical shortage of manpower in the sector must be addressed.
When established, it said the institute when established would provide leadership in regulating the training and professional practice of soil science in the country and address the current critical shortage of manpower in the sector.
It therefore called for and emphasized the need for appropriate review and amendment of the Land Use Act; an issue that has re-echoed repeatedly in the Conference and whose resolution is currently pending.
The Committee also recommended the recreation of Commodity Marketing Boards or Corporations, akin to what obtained in the country in the late 1940s to late 1980s, saying that the first set of commodities to be included in this would be cotton, oil palm, cocoa and groundnuts.