24th November, 2017
Gbenro Adesina/Ibadan
Former Nigeria President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo said in Ibadan, Oyo Sate on Friday that the only way to eradicate poverty in Nigeria was to take agricultural business serious as well as encouraging Nigerians to go into agricultural business if they must bid farewell to hunger.
Obasanjo stated this at the launching of Agro-Impact Projects Empowerment Programme, an initiative of the University of Ibadan Women Society, UIWS.
Obasanjo noted that Nigeria’s social economic problems began with the unwillingness of many Nigerians to engage in agricultural business, pointing out that nobody wanted to be identified as a farmer.
The former President who insisted that agriculture remained the solution to the country’s myriad problems suggested that farming should be glamorized by changing the nomenclature to agricultural business, saying “calling someone a farmer somewhat sounds derogatory, but when you address him as Agric Business entrepreneur, he is happy and more people will be willing to be so identified”.
According to him, “our youth don’t want to do farming. They want to be governor and President, whereas farmers are kings because once hunger is removed from the plethora of problems you have, the problems are halved. Therefore let us do everything possible to take agriculture seriously.
“I am happy with the launching of this initiative because when you see women in the university pioneering this kind of initiative, then, I can see that we have embarked on a social economic recovery path”, the former President remarked, promising to collaborate with the UIWS for the sustainability of the project”.
Earlier, the UIWS President, Dr. Eyiwumi Olayinka, a lecturer in the Faculty of Arts and wife of the UI Vice Chancellor, Professor Abel Idowu Olayinka said that the initiative was a strategy to create job for women and youth so as to empower them economically.
Olayinka stated that the society planned to leverage on the abundance of intellectual resources in the university to impact the society adding that hunger and poverty could be tackled if this initiative was supported.
In her presentation, Dr. Morufat Balogun, one of the arrow heads of the programme disclosed that the project required N500million to put in place all that was needed.