FCT Agriculture Gets a Boost

By: Freda Aideyan

As part of efforts to restore agriculture back to its enviable status, the FCT Administration has established a 12-Member Agricultural Development Programme Executive Committee to give the sector a boost.

The FCT Minister of State, Dr. Ramatu Tijjani-Aliyu, inaugurated the Committee in her Conference Room Monday in Abuja to drive the process.

During the short ceremony, the Minister of State noted that the establishment and inauguration of the Committee is in line with the President Muhammadu Buhari’s mandate of lifting100 million out of poverty.

Tijjani-Aliyu restated that the FCT Administration also places high premium on agriculture as a viable tool for ensuring food and nutrition security aimed at reduction of poverty and creation of jobs amongst households in the Territory.

According to her, “The commitment of this Administration to ensuring increased productivity in the agricultural sector and poverty reduction is evidenced in the initiation of series of viable and sustainable policies and programmes aimed at restoring agriculture back to its initial enviable status before the discovery of oil”.

Her words: “The recently launched National Agricultural Technology and Innovation Policy (NATIP) which is meant to provide a roadmap for the transformation of the agri-food systems in Nigeria is another giant step taken by the Administration in ensuring food security in the country.”

“The policy aims to bring about a long lasting economic and social change through public and private sector investment in agriculture and rural development,” she added.

Tijjani-Aliyu emphasized that the policy also seeks to meet the needs of women, young people and people with special needs, by consciously incorporating technology and innovation into the agricultural sector which, she said requires engagement of appropriate strategies for effective delivery.

The Minister of State said that in order to ensure greater efficiency in the operations of the Agricultural Development Programme, a change of approach and structural transformation has become inevitable.

She, therefore, expressed the hope that the reversal of the FCT Agriculture Development Programme to its initial Agency status cannot be done at a better time than now as issues of food security is a front burner in the programmes of this Administration.

She said, “the agenda status is believed will put the establishment in a better position to discharge its responsibility more effectively, leveraging the existing structure”.

The Chairman of the Committee, who is also the FCT Permanent Secretary, Mr. Olusade Adesola, appreciated the commitment of the FCT Minister of State towards the development of the agricultural sector which no doubt has led to the inauguration of the committee.

“You are concerned on the need to promote agriculture and by extension employment in the FCT and these are all outcomes that are embedded in the agric development programme”, he stressed.

While acknowledging that the task before the committee is daunting, Adesola who spoke on behalf of the members of the committee, promised that the committee would work assiduously to achieve the attainment of the aims and objectives of the project.