Government okays new agric roadmap for food sufficiency

FEC to deploy civil defence corps against rampaging herdsmen

The Federal Executive Council, (FEC) yesterday approved a new agricultural roadmap for self-sufficiency in food production, preservation and export.

The Council also approved the request by the Kaduna State Government to take over two federal township roads in the Kaduna metropolis. The essence of the request was for the state government to rehabilitate them.

Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, and his Women Affairs and Social Development counterpart, Senator Aisha Al-Hassan, briefed newsmen after the meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari, with Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo in attendance.

Ogbeh noted that the roadmap for agricultural operations, with three-year lifespan, provides details of policies and objectives for positioning agriculture as the next biggest alternative to oil in government’s drive to diversify the economy.
“The document, titled: ‘The Green Alternative,’ outlines virtually everything we need to do, every policy we need to undertake to achieve self sufficiency in agriculture and also to become major exporter of food and cash crops.”
According to Ogbeh, “We are working hard ‎and thank God that ours has not become as bad as a South American country. I mean Venezuela, whose situation is definitely a 100 times worse than ours.”

On clashes between farmers and herdsmen, Ogbeh said discussions have begun at the highest level of government to ensure that members of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) were drafted to strategic places to protect investors in agricultural ventures against the invading herdsmen.

He said many farmers are coming in, including foreign investors and they stand the risk of being harassed. So, we are talking with the Ministry of Interior that we have to put measures in place. These things are happening in other countries too, where the civil defence corps may have to train a special department to protect huge investors and investment in their farms for a fee, because kidnapping will not stop.

Senator Al-Hassan said FEC approved the memo presented by Minister of Power, Works, Housing and Urban Development, for the re-designation of two roads in Kaduna State from being federal roads to state roads based on the request by the Kaduna State governor, to Mr. President to have the two roads mentioned, the Nnamdi Azikiwe Express Way, that is the Kaduna bye-pass road as is popularly called, and the popular Ahmadu Bello Way, which runs across almost inside Kaduna town.

“There two roads are presently Federal roads but he requested that there be re-designated as state roads so that they will have the power without any inhibition to work on the road to make them better for Kaduna indigenes,” she said.