Food security: FG urges civil servants to embrace agriculture

The Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HoCSF), Dr. Folasade Yemi-Esan, has urged civil servants to embrace agriculture in line with the Renewed Hope Agenda of the President Bola Tinubu-led administration to boost food security and economic advancement.

She made the call weekend in Abuja at the symbolic presentation of cheques to beneficiaries of the Bank of Agriculture (BoA) credit facility under the Agriprenuership Training Scheme of the federal government.

Yemi-Esan urged the four civil servants who received an N2.3m loan from the BoA, to utilise the facility judiciously and create wealth.

She said that the Agriprenuership Scheme for civil servants was conceived in line with the sixth pillar of the Federal Civil Service Strategy and Implementation Plan 2021 to 2025 (FCCIP25) which focuses specifically on value proposition as a veritable instrument to enhance the welfare and well-being of civil servants for high impact performance.

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“The programme creates a window for those in service to earn supplementary income to improve their quality of life, as well as enable those retiring to cope with life after Service while at the same time contributing to the development of the other sectors of the economy, and by implication, increase the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country,” Yemi-Esan said.

Earlier, the Permanent Secretary, Service Welfare Office (SWO), in the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Mr. Mahmud Adam Kambari, said the event was a celebration of resilience, hard work, and the unwavering spirit of those who have utilised the opportunity provided through the Agripreneurship Scheme of the Federal Public Service Entrepreneurship Programme, to emerge as beneficiaries of the credit facility.

Also, the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of BoA, Mr. Alwan Ali Hassan, urged the civil servants to embrace the scheme.

Hassan assured that the stringent criteria for accessing the credit facility would be reviewed to enable many civil servants to access the facility in the near future and that the credit facility was given to four beneficiaries at a nine percent interest rate.