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Paul Orude, Bauchi
Bauchi State Government has concluded arrangements to train 1000 youths in collaboration with yhe International Skills Acquisition Center (ISAC) on modern expertise and methods on agriculture to boost production.
The training would enabled the beneficiaries to have expertise in areas of cow pea, sweet potatoes and carrots production.
Bauchi State governor, Sen. Bala Mohammed, disclosed this on Friday when he received a delegation from ISAC, led by Pastor John Kennedy Opara, the former Executive Secretary of the National Christian Pilgrims Welfare Commission at the Government House.
“l sent my Commissioner for Agriculture to one of the ISAC farms and l got a favourable report.
“We are connected by our desire to use expertise, improved technology and other techniques so that we can provide employment for our teeming youths to increase production and yield as well as our GDP,” he said, adding that the training was necessary because Government alone cannot all the youths.
“When l studied the proposal from ISAC, l discovered that we are connected by our own Agriculture policies that we launched so that we can incentivised their capabilities around our value chains in some of the crops that have been mentioned,” he said.
“We can also leverage the Central Bank of Nigeria policy, NIRSAL Micro Finance bank and the rest so that we can do this training without any pain but we must know that there is no free lunch anywhere.
“Government will bear the cost of training and whoever goes there will be trained to explore his own personal capabilities so that he can contribute his own quota for the growth and development of Bauchi and Nigeria.
“We must work towards creating self employment and the safest way is through agriculture. We don’t have to go to Israel or Ethiopia we can see how they raised their GDP with their Micro economy through agriculture.
“Here is a state (Bauchi) where we don’t have any IGR and we have to create it. I was in Germany and the Germany corporation is ready to come to Bauchi but couldn’t come because of the Coronavirus. With the training me ISAC is doing by the time the Germans come we need the outgrower and they will also do the same thing we are doing the off takers will create Cooperatives . I already have a vision of where l want to go l.only need partner. We must produce and we must have up takers for production and the farmers bmust be assisted with techniques, farm implement and fertilizers,” he said.
According to the governor, farming is no longer a poverty stricken occupation but a business and assured that the administration will continue to partner with organisations such as the CBN and ISAC to boost food production using organic method
The governor commended ISAC for training more than 10,000 youths in Agriculture across the country to increase the yield and boost food production especially in Nassarawa and Cross Rivers States.
Earlier while briefing the governor, Kennedy explained to the governor that ISAC is using the Israeli model and expertise to drive food production using modern technology through training
He disclosed that the cost no training was N285,000 per trainee saying ISAC runs the best training centre in the country.
“When we finish training the students you don’t need to look for money to pay them but we will help them set up and they would be producing things,” he assured.
