L-R: The
Director General of IITA, Dr Nteranya Sanginga; Deputy Director General
(Corporate Services), Ms. Hilde Koper; Deputy Director General (Partnership for
Delivery), Dr Kenton Dashiell during a conference research-for-development in
IITA-Ibadan.
A team of researchers
working on the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture-managed Cassava
Weed Management Project (IITA-CWMP) have said findings from the 5-year project
will respond and address the problems of weeds especially in cassava farming
systems.
The challenge of weeds on
Nigeria’s agricultural productivity was brought to the fore at the meeting of
the Nigeria Zero Hunger Forum (NZHF) held in Ebonyi State, southeast Nigeria.
The Director General of IITA,
Dr Nteranya Sanginga, said with cassava featuring as one of the top priority
crops in most states of Nigeria, the IITA-CWMP would provide innovations to
help the government to tackle the weed menace.
“We want to see increases in
yield in Nigeria, and our innovation in cassava weed management will help
states with cassava as a priority crop to tackle weeds—a major constraint to
cassava transformation,” he explained today.
Last year, Ebonyi State
Governor, David Umahi, in listing the challenges facing agricultural
development, noted that weeds were the most notorious constraint limiting
agriculture development. Worse still, the adulteration of herbicides is not
helping matters and is undermining efforts by resource-poor farmers to raise
their productivity.
Expressing concerns over the
issue, stakeholders unanimously issued a communique calling on the Federal
Government to step up the regulation on use and distribution of herbicides and
input market.
They worried that the
uncontrolled influx of adulterated herbicides in the Nigerian market was
jeopardizing the gains made so far in transforming agriculture and efforts to
attain zero hunger.
The goal to attain zero hunger
is a commitment Nigeria has made since the declaration of the Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015.
Taking the SDGs forward, Nigeria’s
former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, has initiated and is leading efforts
to help the country to achieve SDG 2 (Zero Hunger) with the creation of the
Nigeria Zero Hunger Forum initiative.
The former president, with the
support of IITA, the World Food Program (WFP), and the African Development Bank
(AfDB), has created a forum comprising six pilot states that are desiring to
hit the target of zero hunger by 2025.
The Deputy Director General,
Partnership for Delivery, Dr Kenton Dashiell, said IITA’s participation in NHZF
would help Nigeria to tap the institute’s capacity in science and innovation to
address hunger in the country.
Dr Alfred Dixon, Project
Leader, IITA-CWMP noted that once the problem of weeds is addressed, farmers
would have a boom in harvest.
The meeting in Ebonyi, which
attracted about 500 persons from both the public and private sectors, was the
second after the initial one in Benue state.
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