Engage in farming to tackle poverty, unemployment, monarch urges youths


The traditional ruler of Offa in Kwara, Oba Mufutau Gbadamosi, has urged Nigerians especially youths to engage massively in farming in a bid to tackle poverty and unemployment in the country.

Gbadamosi said at the annual royal dinner held in his palace on the New Year eve that farming on a large scale by Nigerians was the surest bailout from the current recession and poverty.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the dinner was in recognition of Chief Rafiu Rabana, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria and former Secretary General, Nigerian Bar Association (NBA).

Rabana was honoured on the occasion for his contributions to the development of the community.

Gbadamosi, a businessman and one-time National President of Rice Importers Association, said self-sufficiency in food production would put the nation back on track.

“When everybody is able to feed his family, the problem will be lesser and in order to avert a recurrence of the economic hardship of 2016, everybody must go back to farm in 2017.

“When we have enough foods, what happened in‎ the year 2016 would not have happened,’’ he said.

On the role of traditional rulers in the polity, he urged the Federal Government to give specific roles to them under the constitution, saying “we are the closest to the people.”

This, he said, was necessary in order to stimulate community development and avoid wastage in government.

According to Gbadamosi, many projects that have no relevance to communities were executed without due consultation with traditional rulers.

He promised to inaugurate a fund raiser soon for the socio-econiomic development of the ancient town.

“We shall target between N100 and N200 million annually and with this fund, we will be able to drive the transformation and infrastructural development of Offa.”

The ex-NBA scribe, in his remarks, described the corruption charges levelled against some judges as great lessons for both the judges and lawyers.

He said that the development had shown that the era of impunity by judges and judicial workers was over.

Rabana, who was Ilorin Branch chairman of NBA, said the “crisis rocking the judiciary is an unfortunate development, but they came with a lot of lessons.’’

“If we have been doing things in a wrong way or we have been doing things that nobody will ask us any question or nobody ever thought anybody can arrest judges and put them on trial.


“The lesson out of it is that we are not immune to impunity or prosecution,’’ he said.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Monsanto Nigeria Launches 3 Conventional Maize Hybrids

Maize farmers across Nigeria now have 3 high yielding conventional maize hybrids to choose from the DEKALB ® brand as Monsanto Agriculture Nigeria Limited launches 3 conventional maize hybrids. The launch held in Abuja on Tuesday May 17 2016 had in attendance farmers, development partners, government regulatory bodies and other stakeholders from both the private and public sectors of the economy. The launch of these hybrid seeds follows their registration by the National Committee on Naming, Registration and Release of Crop Varieties, Livestock Breeds and Fisheries in February 2016. The white maize hybrid, DK234 alongside the 2 yellow maize hybrids, DK920 and DK818 obtained registration approval for use in Nigeria after testing across various agro ecological zones on multi-location farms. The white maize hybrid DK234 with yield potential of 13 tonnes per hectare is well adapted for the Southern and Northern Guinea Savanna ecologies and shows tolerance to Maize Streak Virus, ...
Read more

Tomato disease outbreak: Institute appeals for research funding

The National Horticultural Research Institute, Ibadan, has appealed for funding to carry out research and create awareness on the tuta absoluta pest on tomatoes. The Institute’s Head of Vegetable Programme, Dr Olagorite Adetula, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Ibadan on Friday that there was an urgent need to tackle the problem to save the economy. Adetula said the institute needed money to do surveillance survey of the pest/damage, ascertain the impact of the damage and proffer solution for eradicating the pest. She appealed to the Federal Government to help the institute get pheromones to lure and trap the pests and distribute to farmers. ``Spraying insecticides is not the best, the pest has high production rate, some of them can escape while spraying it and they will be resistant to the insecticide thereby causing us more cost. ``The pheromones can be used for six to eight weeks before changing it, it is very effective, the pest has short life cycle, wit...
Read more

10,000 women farmers to be engaged in ECOWAS rice project – official

Image
 Mr Richard Olafare, the President, Seed Entrepreneurs Association of Nigeria (SEEDAN) says 10,000 women will be engaged in the recently inaugurated Rice Seed Up-Scaling Project. This is contained in a presentation on the project made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Friday. Olafare said 8,000 youths would also be engaged in the scaling project. According to him, the number of women and youths represented 50 per cent and 40 per cent respectively of the 20,000 farmers that will participate in the project. NAN reports that the project is an initiative of the West Africa Seed Programme (WASP) in support of the ECOWAS Rice Offensive Programme that was inaugurated in 2014. Among other objectives, it is targeting the production of 60,000 metric tonnes of paddy rice for Nigeria by December 2017, using 1,200 certified seeds. The project is being implemented by SEEDAN in collaboration with the West and Central Africa Council for Agricultura...
Read more