After 64 years of political independence, Nigeria remained an incredible irony in the context of its failure to make a significant headway in economic and social development despite the vast endowment in human and natural resources. The country has been mono-cultural with over dependence on oil to the detriment of agriculture and other critical sectors of the economy. Hence, the country continued to linger in the doldrums as a country of the future due to non-diversification of its economy and the consequent reliance on a single commodity, which is crude oil. The gross neglect of agriculture and other critical sectors that would have fostered the diversification of the economy for a meaningful development underscored the lack of appreciable performance of the economy over the years.

The focus of the paper is on the critical role of agriculture in the diversification of the Nigerian economy in order to achieve sustainable development of the country. The study relied on secondary sources of data and adopted the Theory of Political Development as its analytical framework. The study found that the agricultural sector in Nigeria has the potentials to be the industrial and economic springboard from which the country’s development could take-off. The study accordingly, recommended that the Nigerian political leaders must muster the political will to face the challenges of agriculture through appropriate agricultural development policies to accelerate the development of the country.