FG Restates Commitment To Encourage Youths In Agriculture

Chief Audu Ogbeh,

President Muhammadu Buhari has restated his administration’s commitment to grow the agricultural sector by encouraging the youth to pick interest in agriculture.


He revisited this at the opening ceremony of the 9th regional implementation forum of the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD)-supported projects in West and Central Africa (WCA), with the theme “Investing in rural youth: How do we plant the seeds for the future?”  held in Abuja.

He stated that agriculture was the best way to maximize the potentials of the Nigerian youth population for their inclusive and beneficial participation in the task of economic diversification, pointing out that government planned to map out available lands which would be allocated to prospective and interested youths across the country for the production of high yielding food crops.

The president who was represented by the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, said good initiatives were not enough as implementation had always been a recurring challenge in virtually all the countries, adding countries had produced world-class blueprints aimed at addressing key challenges in the past which had produced mixed results.

He therefore called on the forum to reflect on the challenges of the past and the opportunities inherent in the present dynamics in order to come out with new implementation frameworks for sustainable and impactful delivery of programmes and projects through a more accountable, participatory and cost effective process.

Earlier in his address, the IFAD president, Dr Kanayo Nwanze, said the hopes and dreams for the future of the continent rested in the hands of the young people, who are the continent’s untapped resources.

He said the money Nigeria is using to import more than $6 billion agricultural products annually should be invested in producing food locally and creating employment and wealth in Africa.

He urged government to introduce policies that would encourage investment in the agro-industrial sector at every point along the value chains, saying these policies must encourage inclusive and transparent partnerships, so that poor rural people were not left behind, exploited or excluded.

In his remarks, the Minister of State for Agriculture and Rural Development, Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, described the theme of the conference as an important knowledge sharing event that would provide opportunity to discuss recent developments, highlight IFAD strategy and portfolio performance in the region with a view to agreeing on how to collectively sustain achieved results and impact on the lives of the rural poor.