Buhari Has Done A Lot To Aid Food Security/Agribusiness In Nigeria – NALDA

The National Agricultural Land Development Authority, NALDA has presented a scorecard of achievements after one year of revival on June 1, 2020, by President Muhammadu Buhari, after it was scrapped 20 years ago.

The Executive Secretary and Chief Executive Officer, NALDA, Prince Paul Ikonne, recently made the presentation at the headquarters of the agency.

According to him, Buhari’s dream of ensuring NALDA takes its priie of place and its lost glory restored as far as food production, agribusiness and job creation is currently coming to pass.

He added that the vision for the agency is super clear, and with the backing from the President, NALDA’s abandoned farm estates across the country have been recovered.

His words,”,We embarked on this vigorously and as at today, we have identified and recovered NALDA farm estates that were abandoned in the last 20 years in Katsina, Ekiti, Gombe, Borno, Adamawa, Taraba, Niger, Kebbi, Oyo, Imo, Lagos, Delta, Bauchi, Yobe, Kaduna, Benue, Kogi, Osun, Anambra, Akwa Ibom and Abia States. “We have started reactivating them in phases.”

“On the 1st of June 2020, President Muhammadu Buhari resuscitated NALDA and domiciled it under his supervision as contained in the Act that establishes NALDA and appointed my humble self as Executive Secretary/CEO with a clear directive to achieve NALDA’s mandate as contained in the Act.”

“With this directive in mind, we were determined to achieve Mr. President’s directive, so we reached out to Nigerians to volunteer and we got thousands of volunteers out of which we chose few to coordinate the activities of NALDA in various States while some staff were posted to us from Ministries and other Government agencies.”

“You will recall that in our first press briefing we announced our animal husbandry programme, which included rabbittry and goat rearing in some pilot states. This program is a huge success as we have harvested over 30,000 litres of rabbit urine and 1,000kg of rabbit droppings, which are being used as fertilizer having subjected it to lab analysis and the rabbit farmers are making income from this.”

“After Mr. President’s directive on recovery of NALDA abandoned farm estates across the country, we embarked on this vigorously and as at today, we have identified and recovered NALDA farm estates in the following States; Gombe, Borno, Adamawa, Taraba, Niger, Kebbi, Oyo, Imo, Katsina, Lagos, Ekiti, Delta, Bauchi, Yobe, Kaduna, Benue, Kogi, Osun, Anambra, Akwa Ibom and Abia States. We have started reactivating them in phases.”

“NALDA engaged in dry season farming of rice in some pilot States of Adamawa, Niger, Yobe, Taraba and Bauchi. Farmers were trained on dry season farming of which they were not used to and we are expecting harvest in the coming weeks. NALDA provided all the farmers required for farming ranging from tractors, boreholes, pumping machines, planters and trans-planters, fertilizer and seeds.”

“In order to achieve food security under the National Young Farmers’ Scheme (NYFS), which Mr. President launched in November 2020, NALDA introduced the training and empowering of young graduates through the initiative of Soil Doctors and Extension Service Providers.”

“You will recall that I briefed the Press that NALDA was going to train and empower 30,000 soil Doctors. This program had since commenced and over 500 Soil Doctors have been trained in Borno and Jigawa States.”

“All these achievements were made possible by President Muhammadu Buhari’s decision to achieve food security and create employment opportunities in Nigeria.”