The Kwara State government has engaged 150 farmers in a five-day capacity training towards improved economic target and abundance food production.

The farmers, 30 from each of the five Special Agric-Industrial Processibg Zone (SAPZ’s) catchment areas: Ifelodun, Asa, Kaiama, Baruten and Mooro local governments were engaged in: “high-yield seed: crop protection, products and fertilisers” under the state’s SAPZ project.

The commissioner for finance, Dr. Hauwa Nuru who represented Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq explained that the training was part of the governor’s vision to improve economy and sustain job creation.

She added that the benefits from it would only materialise when the trainees optimise the importance of the use of seeds, certainly guaranteed by the economic dimension of the training.

“To achieve this, we must urge the farmers to take the training seriously,” she said, nudging the facilitators to be more practical, “so that our farmers will be more confident in applying their experience here in their various farms,” the governor stated.

According to AbdulRahman: “government cannot do it alone, there must be collaborations with financial institutions and other relevant agencies. Let us use agriculture to generate money and more jobs and improve living standards in Kwara State.”

Also, the coordinator of SAPZ, Eng. Busari Toyin Isiaka said the capacity building for the farmers was a response to the crop component of the SAPZ project.

He posited that it is not enough to be a farmer, “it is a nice one to be a smart farmer not just a farmer,” he stated.

Meanwhile, the Commissioner, earlier, hinted that the state government paid over N30billion to offset salary, pension and gratuity backlog owed by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) government.

She stated that civil servants in Kwara State are now better for it: “every state government worker is now being taken care and is happy with the state government.”