Kwara to Engage Youths in Agriculture

Posted by African Examiner News Sunday, October 20th, 2013

The African Examiner

As part of measures to check growing unemployment, especially among youths, Kwara State Government says it will fully engage the youth in agriculture with the provision of funds and farm inputs as part of the government’s commercial agriculture scheme.

Kwara state Governor, AbdulFatai Ahmed

The State Governor, Dr Abdulfatah Ahmed disclosed this at a special media chat focused on youth held on Friday at the Governor’s Lodge, Government House, Ilorin.

The Governor said government responsibility was to create policies that would drive the economy, saying that in order to achieve the objectives of youth empowerment, it embarked on the enumeration of youth that would be positioned into various skills including Agriculture.

According to him, government set up the Malete youth farm with the aim of training youth in agriculture, stressing that already, some of the youths have graduated and given funds to set up their own farms across the state. “Already, they are being compartmentalized into crops and locations and are expected to go to their locations to become change agents in agricultural sector”, Governor affirmed..

“The success recorded would now enable us to begin to expand it by choosing people from each of the 16 local governments who would largely become “change agents” , the governor stressed.

According to him, each farmers haven successfully completed his own farming skill would now become a master trainer and cluster himself with another set of five to ten farmers.

“The most important part of it was that we have set up an agric mall because we have to go into agric business on a commercial bases by looking at the constraint that disallow people from making success in the agric business” Ahmed said.

He said the Agric Mall would provide access to funding, agricultural inputs, and access to off-takers, adding that farmers can now go to the Agric Mall to meet farm extension workers and banking support team for their services.

“The scheme would now be replicated in all the three senatorial district of the state. For now we are test running that of Ilorin, the success of Ilorin will now lead to the setting up of one or two in Kwara north, one in Shonga axis one in Kaiama axis and of course some in Kwara south” the governor said.