Kehinde Adeleye
The Chairman of Agege Local Government, Mr. Ganiyu Kola Egunjobi, has called on the government at all level to subsidize farming, and encouraged the youths to embrace farming as the panacea for food security.
The council chairman stated this in his welcome address at the Lagos State House of Assembly Stakeholders meeting held on Friday, 11 October, 2024, at the council’s newly built event centre in the Secretariat.
“May I welcome you all to this year’s edition of Constituency Stakeholders’ Meeting, an event put in place by the Lagos State House of Assembly under the leadership of Rt. Hon. Mudasiru Ajayi Obasa to gather together stakeholders across all the 57 council areas to deliberate on specific issues.
The purpose of the programme is to enable the state lawmakers to make informed decisions as regards governance.
This year’s theme is: Ensuring Food For a Sustainable Future: Youth Participation And Home Grown Farming.
The idea of deliberating on the need for Nigerian youths to go into farming could not come at a better time.
Food insecurity remains one of the country’s challenges.
The problems responsible for this are many.
Among them are: insecurity that has to do with too many ungoverned areas in the country, which makes farmers target of kidnaps and ritual killings.
The list which cannot be exhausted also includes the fact that most farmers in Nigeria are into subsistence farming rather than mechanised farming, and the near absence of infrastructure most especially in matters of agricultural value chain.
Farming in Nigeria is equally not attractive to the teeming youths.
My suggestion that would get us out of the woods is for government at all levels to subsidize farming hugely.
Access to credit to farmers should not only be as easy as pie, it should also be given at a very low-interest rate.
Government should also improve on existing physical infrastructures in farming communities that would discourage urban migration and encourage youths to embrace farming.
By taking those steps, Nigeria would attain food security while joblessness that is currently afflicting the country’s youths would be a thing of the past.
To me, the issue of farming and youth unemployment is a burning issue, which requires all stakeholders’ contributions.
