President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the setting up of integrated farm estates in all senatorial districts across the country
This was disclosed over the weekend by the Executive Secretary of the National Agricultural Land Development Authority, (NALDA), Prince Paul Ikonne, after a meeting with Buhari at the Presidential Villa in Abuja.
To make the plan successful, Ikonne appealed to the various state governments across the country to subscribe to the project by making arable lands available for the project in their states.
According to the NALDA boss, providing required land is expected to take away youths from the unemployment market and engage them so as to achieve food security in a very short period of time.
He said the Kogi State government has donated 700 hectares of land to NALDA for the integrated land estate while the 100 hectares of land donated by the Ogun State government has already been cleared.
He said that the President was committed to and working towards ensuring that the country achieved food security, adding that Nigerians would live to remember the foundation President Buhari was laying on achieving food sufficiency.
“What the President is doing, the foundation he’s laying in agriculture, is what Nigerians would live to remember him for. No other government, no other government, I repeat, has done as much as Mr. President has done in agriculture and that is why Nigeria is coming closer to achieving food sufficiency.
“If not for Mr. President’s proactive initiative towards farming, the COVID-19 would have knocked everybody out, having been locked in a room or in a house for one year, nobody went to farm, but because of the proactive initiatives he took before COVID-19 came, there was enough food for Nigerians to eat.
“Going further, we are seeking more land donations so that states, governments and communities should make their lands available. The President has directed that we should put up this integrated farm estates in the remaining 108 senatorial district and NALDA is ready to roll out, and for those states that have made the land available, they can as well testify that no time is being wasted and we have swung into action.
“So, I call on other state governors to key into Mr. President’s desire to make land available for this farm estate to be established, as this will take away youths from the unemployment market and engage them and we’ll be able to achieve food security in a very short period of time,” he said.