By correspondent in Ilorin.
To encourage food security and sufficiency, a group of youth farmers in Kwara state has called on the Kwara state government to help them provide 10 hectares of farm land in each of the 193 wards in the state.
The coordinator of the group of the group, Prof. Samuel Ibiyemi,made the call while speaking with journalists in Ilorin on Tuesday..
He said the project aimed to make some of the youth engage in entrepreneurship in agro processing with the support of Chinese investment and technology transfer.
Prof. Ibiyemi said: “We are also looking up to the government to finance the preparation of 10 hectares of land per ward in the state, where we will have five hectares for Moringa and five hectares for food crops.
“By doing so, Kwara State will have enough food, and the food scarcity we are all experiencing will be over.
“We also thought it wise to promote the planting and use of Moringa for food and cash crops and to give the necessary encouragement for youths to go into farming.
” By the time they are engaged in farming, processing, marketing, and exporting, there will be no youth available for insecurity.
This is the relationship between the original Moringa Development Association of Nigeria and the youth movement.
Professor Ibiyemi, who appreciated the state government’s provision of farm inputs to the group in recent times, pledged to partner with the Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq led administration to make his tenure as chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum worthy.
Also speaking, the secretary of the Goodwill Move for Kwara Youth in Agriculture (GMKYA), Pastor Emmanuel Adekoya, encouraged citizens to support agriculture in order to restore better lives in communities and Nigeria as a whole.
“We are of the view that, the government should promote youths in agriculture by financing land preparation that will be done by the River Basin Development Authority
“This is the cheapest organization for land preparation and water,to help us in developing this kind of farming. The government should show more interest by making funds available,” he said.
The group assured that the funding, when provided, would be used to recruit and engage unskilled farm workers to assist the youth as well as vigilance men to provide security on the farm.
He added that government’s funding and support in that regard would turn the state into a food basket and industrial hub in the production of food and cash crops.
Our correspondent gathered that GMKYA, is a youth wing of the Moringa Development Association of Nigeria, the Ranch and Livestock Cooperative Society, as well as the Cultural and Societal Value Development Initiative.
Edited by Dawud.