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By Chinyere Anyanwu, [email protected]
The role of agriculture as poverty eradication toolin developing societies, has again been re-emphasised by the Speaker, of Bauchi State House of Assembly, Suleiman Abubakar, who assured that the State will prioritise it to ensure food security and poverty eradication.
Abubakar made the assertion when he received members of the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) and Oxfam who paid him an advocacy visit to advance improvement in extension services for smallholder farmers and gender-responsive policies in agriculture.
Commending the visitors for choosing advocacy in agriculture, the Speaker submitted that the importance of agriculture cannot be overemphasised, stressing that extension services were equally important in modern agriculture and mechanised farming. He assured that the State Assembly would liaise with the executive arm of government in the state to ensure that extension workers recently trained in Abuja are absorbed by the state government.
Earlier in his remarks, CISLAC Director, Auwal Ibrahim Musa, informed that they were in Bauchi State Assembly to pay an advocacy visit to advance improvement in extension services for smallholder farmers and advocate gender-responsive policies in agriculture.
Represented by Muhammad Murtala, Musa said that as part of its Together Against Poverty (TAP) project, CISLAC, with support from Oxfam, was advocating the promotion of fairer and more resilient food systems capable of improving the livelihood of women, men and small-scale producers in Bauchi and Gombe states.
He said the centre had met last year with members of the Assembly during which the chairman, House Committee on Agriculture made commitments to expand the extension service programme in the state through the reintegration of the state extension service trainees from the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) as well as supporting extension service delivery through budgetary considerations within the state’s budget review.
