A former Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Pilgrim Christian Commission (NCPC), Prof Kennedy Opara, has argued that Nigeria has no business with with poverty giving the country’s agriculture potential.
Opara, who is the Chairman of CSSP farm, Gora, told journalists recently, during a training of over 160 indigenes of Oyo State, sponsored by the Emma Njoku Foundation, that Nigeria must look inwards especially in agriculture to rebound the naira.
According to him, the government must be deliberate in not only funding agriculture but also provide enabling environment for the training and retraining of farmers.
He added that without adequate training and the mechanisation of the agricultural process, Nigeria would continue to rely on import of basic foodstuffs.
Apart from relying on import, he said insecurity will skyrocket because most youths would settle for crime to survive.
He said: “We need to put the youth together and train them. Nigeria can be exporting food to so many nations without any challenge. But as long as we are not able to train and empower them, the land we have will remain underutilized.
“So, this training is to empower people to farm and produce food, and insecurity will become the thing of the past. Without employment, there will be constant insecurity. It does not matter what you do.
“When people are gainfully employed they will be able to use their time. We need to make sure that we maximize this opportunity to help our people and that is what we see doing here.
“I want government to support in the area of bringing unemployed youths from different states for training.
“Niger State has 7.6 million hectares of land, three times bigger than Israel. So, they can afford to give the government one or two million hectares of land.
“And government in turn will bring unemployed youths to be trained and then provide the land, the inputs that they need so that they can start growing food. And I can tell you, we will earn a lot.
“The only way we can stabiliser our currency is by increasing the volume of our export. As soon as our import value is higher than our export value we will continue to experience the problem of dollar exchange.
“So, we need government to help raise unemployed youths, bring them together and train them.”
He added that, “Until you discover your vision, there is no life. You can only predict your future when you discover your vision.”
On his part, Head of Human Resources, Emma Njoku Foundation, Nwabueze Onuegbu, said: “We are training these people not because there is something they are going to do for us, but the chairman of the foundation, Dr Emma Njoku have decided that we train these people in agro businesses.
“Business is a big opportunity. So we want them to learn a new method in agriculture and not the old method of agriculture. This one is the use of machinery.”
Also, the Programme Officer of the Foundation, Ifeanyi Ihugba added: “We are passionate about reducing poverty in the country. The foundation is passionate about agriculture.”
