Lagos State Government has reaffirmed commitment to making agriculture play a prominent development role in making the State a 21st century economy
This indication was contained in the keynote address delivered by commissioner for Agricultural, Oluwatoyin Suarau during the opening of the Agro-processing, pPoductivity Enhancement and lLvelihood iIprovement Support , (APPEALS) project advocacy/ interactive session held at Airport hotel, Ikeja, the city’s capital.
The permanent secretary of the state minidtry of Agriculture, Dr. olayiwole Onasanya who delivered the commissioner’s keynote address said APPEALS project , is a comprehensive six-year World Bank assisted project with the basic strategy of increasing productivity, production and improving processing and marketing of the targeted value chains of Poultry, Aquaculture and rice for Lagos State which is expected to foster job creation along the value chains.
He said the advocacy and interactive session for APPEALS project’s tertiary audience which include royal fathers, administrators, agropreneurs, researchers, financial institutions, certification agencies and other stakeholders is important to developing partnership arrangement for the participation of policy makers, opinion and community leaders, influencers and collaborating stakeholders to achieve optimal delivery of set goals.
“It is our usual project implementation style in the Ministry, we shall be engaging all relevant stakeholders in identifying challenges especially at the inception stage and seek for ways to profer solution. We recognise the need for bottom-top approach in our project implementation which is why this consultation is very necessary at this time of the project’s life” Onasanya stated
In their goodwill messages, the royal fathers, Oba Tijani Akinloye, the Ojomu of Ajiranland and Oba Ganiu Adegbesan, the Onise of Ise land, commended the initiative but wants Lagos State Government not to renege on its counterpart funding of the project to enhance local farmers output especially in rice production as they pledged their support towards the success of the project
In his remarks at the occasion, the national project coordinator, Dr Amin Babandi who was represented by the National Operations Officer, Dr. Salisu Garba thr
200 million dollars federal government, world bank and state government project seeks partnership arrangement with community leaders, farmers and influencers to make farming of rice, poultry and aquaculture a technology driven agribusiness from 2018- 2023
He urged Lagos to consolidate its successes recorded in
ADP and FADAMA projects in boosting the capacities of 10,000 farmers per year for the next six years as other six’s where the APPEALS project is operating nsmly, Cross Rivers, Kano, Kaduna, Enugu and Kogi are looking up to Lagos for competitiveness.
APPEALS state project cordinator in Lagos State, Mrs.. Oluranti Oviebo said the targeted 10,000 beneficiary farmers who must have been in the agribusiness for three years in the poultry, aquaculture and rice value chain, they must have records of up-to-date farming activities and should be a registered member of a cooperative society.
She said the project will train everyone beneficiary farmers before committing funds to them while women and the youth will have special consideration of 10% and 35% slots under the project.
The participants were told that the state government will continue to support public /private sector partnership for Agricultural sustainability and food security in Lagos state