About 4000 farmers in Borno State are expected to benefit from the National Agricultural Land Development Authority (NALDA)’s Integrated Farm Estate and fish farms projects in the state.
Beneficiaries include those returning home from the Internally Displace Persons (IDPs) camps across the country.
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The Executive Secretary of NALDA, Prince Paul Ikonne, stated this after an inspection tour of the NALDA Integrated Farm Estate under construction in Jere Local Government Area of the state, alongside the State Governor, Prof Babagana Zulum, on Thursday in Borno.
According to him, the 100-hectare farm estate is expected to create over 1,500 jobs for the people.
He said the fish farms would give over 2,500 women an opportunity to earn a living from fish farming in addition to processing and packaging value chains activities.
He said the agency was working hard to rehabilitate and empower the IDPs along the entire agricultural value chain and provide them with the enabling environment as directed by President Muhammadu Buhari.
Ikonne said NALDA is committed to President Buhari’s drive to ensuring that the agricultural potentials in every state of the federation are developed to provide millions of jobs to rural communities and boost economic activities in order to halt rural-urban migration.
When fully completed and developed across the states, the current NALDA initiatives would also help to drastically reduce the nation’s annual food import bill, address unemployment as well as increase the contribution of agriculture to Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Ikonne commended the state governor for the land donation and support as well as his passion towards the development of agriculture, stressing that; “If we have all the governors in the state throw their support around Mr President’s vision concerning agriculture, I bet you Nigeria will change for good.”
He pointed out that the farm estate would concentrate more on livestock – cattle, goat, sheep, poultry but would also engage in pasture and crop production among others.
The Governor of Borno State, Professor Babagana Zulum, while reacting to the development, said the project had the potential to create jobs for citizens who had lost their sources of livelihood to the current insurgency bedevilling the area.
“The people of this area have completely lost their means of livelihood and having this project in Borno State would ensure that many of our youths would be employed.
“And from the bottom of my heart and on behalf of the people of Borno State, we remain eternally indebted to the NALDA executive secretary for the good jobs that he has been doing,” the governor added.
“This again is another thing I want to see happen in Nigeria – the executive secretary is not sitting down in his office but going round to ensure that what they are doing is right and I encourage him to continue in this spirit,” Professor Zulum said.
The governor also expressed satisfaction over the quality of job being executed at the construction site for both the farm estate and the fish farms.
“The number of projects that NALDA is doing in Borno State is mighty because the projects cut across all the 27 local government areas. But the government has put in place a sustainability mechanism that will ensure the sustenance of these projects,” he said.
The team also visited some of the fish farms, residential apartments, schools, and clinics which are at various levels of completion to benefit the workers and their families.
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