Stories by Moses John
Abuja
Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr. Chris Ngige, has said that agriculture is a catalyst with which the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari want to fight youth unemployment and food insecurity in the country.
The minister who stated this at the launch of Smart Farmer Scheme, an ICT based scheme of the National Directorate of Employment (NDE), said the government is committed to take advantage of the employment benefit in the sector to change the economic fortune of Nigeria.
Ngige who was represented by the permanent secretary in the ministry, Dr. Clement Illoh, said a combination of productive activities in the agricultural sector and ICT will surely make the journey towards repositioning agriculture as one of the corner stones for sustainable national development a reality.
“I am informed that through the smart farmer application, the NDE will be injecting about four hundred and ninety thousand new jobs into the economy in the next three years.
“I am very proud to announce that the NDE in its consistent strides towards mass employment creation has concluded plans to commission two new small scale businesses that will,” he said.
Earlier, acting Director General of the NDE, Kunle Obayan, who said efforts had been made to reposition agriculture as the major foreign exchange earner for Nigeria over the years, noted that the Smart Farmer Scheme would create over 490, 000 jobs as well as boast agriculture.
He said: “The economic recession we are currently experiencing is indicative of the fact that we have not succeeded in our quest to give agriculture its pride of place it has become glaring in the face of dwindling revenue from oil, that Nigeria has no option than to maximise the massive agricultural potentials across the length and breadth of this naturally endowed nation.”
He explained that the ICT driven concept would encourage young Nigerians to get involved in agricultural activities, just had robbed Nigeria of the boundless benefits agriculture holds.
“One of the factors that militated against previous attempts at putting agriculture in the driving seat of our national economy had been the inability of policy implemented to get young Nigerians sufficiently and committedly involved in agriculture as a viable business,” Obayan said.
