Governor Seyi Makinde has disclosed that his administration is committed to making Oyo state a modern agribusiness hub in sub-Saharan Africa.
The governor said this while speaking on Monday at the opening of an event themed, “Agribusiness for Food Security Initiative,” held at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) Ibadan.
In demonstrating this, the governor stated that his administration would continue to give more support to farmers and improve infrastructure and security with a view to attracting large investments in agriculture to the state.
According to him, in his roadmap for accelerated development, he had thought of how to take the people from poverty to prosperity, noting that given the state’s comparative advantage of arable land, it was clear that embracing agriculture was the way to go, but it was also obvious that using the old method of farming would not produce the desired result.
“We are a state that was doing poorly on economic indices. The internally generated revenue was low for a state that has a rich history of economic development and we are close to the nation’s commercial capital. Lagos is not far from here. Every month, they do an IGR of about N65 billion and here, when we came in, it was N1.8 billion but we have now managed to push it close to N4bn. So, in terms of where we want to be, we have not scratched the surface yet,” he said.
Delivering his keynote address, a former President Olusegun Obasanjo said agribusiness would play a vital role in the future of the country, adding that to achieve this, there was the need for the federal government not to be directly involved in agribusiness since the states have the landmass, resources, manpower, innovations and the infrastructure to develop holistic strategies for food security.
Chief Obasanjo maintained that all hands should be on the deck towards doing more as food security and food nutrition would go a long way in providing more employment, boost the foreign exchange and increase in internally generated revenue.
