How Buhari’s Agrarian Revolution will solve socio-economic challenges, by DG VON

Initiative to generate 100 million jobs in 10 years
Director General of Voice of Nigeria (VON) and chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Osita Okechukwu, yesterday, canvassed the re-emergence of rural middle class in Nigeria, as panacea to solving the myriad of socio-economic challenges facing the country.

He said the building of a rural middle class was imperative in addressing the despair, discontent, unemployment, hunger, gross inequality and widespread insecurity which cumulated over the decades and triggered the #EndSARS imbroglio.

Okechukwu assured that one of the initiatives that would help achieve this was President Muhammadu Buhari’s Agrarian Revolution (BUGREV), stressing that it would create a rural middle class if state governors, youths and women sincerely recognise and embrace the agrarian revolution.

Fielding questions from journalists in his hometown, Eke, Enugu State, Okechukwu explained that #BUGREV was an enabler that could enhance the emergence of a rural middle class in Nigeria.

He added: “#BUGREV will make the communities more prosperous, minimise urban migration, gross unemployment and make voters less susceptible to stomach infrastructure so as to strengthen democracy in our dear country.

“Accordingly, for our democracy to consolidate and be sustainable, there is urgent need for youths to embrace #BUGREV so as to construct a middle class in the rural communities to end the EndSARS syndrome.”

Okechukwu stressed that with massive agric mechanization in the rural areas, #EndSARS syndrome will be a thing of the past. “Massive mechanization is a major component of #BUGREV, where subsistence farmers will migrate to commercial farming and commercial farmers will migrate to large-scale farming,” he added.

The Green Imperative Project (GIP), an arm of #BUGREV, seeks to engage thousands of youths in over 600 tractor servicing centres and over 100 agro processing centres. It is the Federal Ministry of Agriculture’s government-to-government project between Nigeria and Brazil.

The tractor servicing centres are meant to avoid the mistakes of the past when farm implements were abandoned at any slight breakdown and rusts away.

Okechukwu described #BURGEV as the roadmap to absorbing #EndSARS members, stressing that it will lead to economic recovery in Nigeria and yield 100 million jobs in 10 years and offset Nigeria’s foreign debts.

He explained that under the #BURGEV, big famers, cooperative farmers and new entrants stand to benefit from the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

He recalled that agriculture formed the stoic strength of Nigeria’s founding fathers, consequent upon which they made landmark achievements like the University of Nigeria Nsukka, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria and Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife.

Okechukwu said five decades post-1970 Nigeria, no military Head of State or civilian President has deeply thought of pragmatically shifting attention back to agriculture and mobilise men and material than President Buhari, who has committed huge amount of money to agriculture transformation and modernization; hence the hashtag #BUGREV.