Agriculture has been an old job since time immemorial. Many nations in the world are proud of their booming economy which is consolidated by agriculture. Agriculture is the backbone of any nation’s economy. Agricultural production was the backbone of the economy of the societies of Nigeria for many decades. Agriculture developed in the region, as in the whole of the central savanna, through practical knowledge and experience accumulated over the millennia. It’s against this background that this paper gives a brief history of agriculture from pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial period’s societies in Northern Nigeria respectively. It examines the challenges of agriculture after the discovery of oil and the need for government to take drastic measures by improving the agricultural sector in order to rescue it from total collapse.