President Bola Tinubu has described the agricultural projects embarked on by Gov. Umar Bago of Niger as a sign of good leadership.
Tinubu said that Bago was walking his talk by embarking on projects that would reduce unemployment, insecurity and food scarcity.
The President stated this at the Agric Mechanisation Revolution for Food Security and Inauguration of the New Airport Terminal, on Monday in Minna.
He said such gestures were expected of all other state governors in order to complement the laudable poverty alleviating programmes of the Federal Government.
The President said that an example was the wage award given by the federal government to its workers, which if religiously implemented would have resulted in less economic burden on Nigerians.
“I am not giving a directive, but I think all states should have equally given out the wage award as agreed on. It will have reduced the hardship and economic inflation in the country.
“At least that was the intention of the award before the final national minimum wage will come up in a few weeks’ time. The National Economic Council (NEC) should consider and adopt this.”
Tinubu said all state governments would be supported in their quest to ensure food availability, accessibility and security for the ordinary Nigerians.
He said already foreign direct investments have started flowing into the country in the fields of agriculture, oil and gas as well as infrastructure.
The President said that a committee would soon be set up to tackle the issue of farmer-herders clashes in the country.
“In the next three weeks, a committee will be set up to take care of these issues.
“We feel the pain of having to lose your harvest to roaming cows. So, we are working to have a lasting solution in order to have food for ordinary Nigerians.”
The Niger state governor pledged to sustain the agricultural revolution set in motion by his administration with active collaboration of other states and the Federal government.
“Already, we have the Niger-Lagos agreement to supply our state paddy rice to Lagos State as an initial programme.
“A number of staff of Lagos will be here to ensure quality assurance and staff of Niger State will go to Lagos on exchange.
“We have also secured a multi-billion dollar agreement with Saudi Arabia to supply animal feeds to them. The land for the project has already been allocated and we hope that by July we should start exporting,” he said.
He said that the state would exploit the Public Private Partnership to sustain the programme because of the noticed ineffectiveness of government-only driven businesses.
Bago said that the state had only prepared the ground for investment in the agricultural potential of the state.
“By June, we expect to bring out about 50,000 metric tonnes of rice in the Niger-Lagos rice deal.
“Similarly, the free zone in the new Bola Ahmed Tinubu International Airport is part of the Special purpose vehicle we intended to attract genuine investors to the state.
“We are also working on road networks across the state. With the largest land mass, we have taken up rehabilitation of some of the Federal roads in order to create access to agriculture products from remote areas of the state,” he said.
The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Sen. Abubakar Kyari, said a lot of efforts have been put in place for the success of the food security initiative of the administration.
He said achievements in forms of foreign investment have started being recorded while various agricultural programmes were been implemented in collaboration with State governments.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Tinubu also paid a courtesy visit on former Heads of State Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar at their residence before departing for Abuja.(NAN)