The recent timely delivery of improved crop seedlings along with other essential farming facilities, such as high-yielding rice seedlings, high-breed cassava stems, fertilizers , herbicides and lots more to susceptible farmers numbering about two thousand and chosen at random indicates the Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi’s inclination towards achieving a food sufficient season and viable economy in the state.
In every earnestness, the program is being bankrolled through the World Bank-Assisted CARES Program in collaboration with Enugu State Government and is designed not only improve on the lives of the beneficiaries but to generate higher ripples of productivity that could engineer local patronage and industrialization and inevitably resulting in the reduction of unemployment in our teeming society.
The kicking off of the development-driven agricultural orientation would ensure that dry season farming could be sustained to achieve all-year-round agricultural productivity that would not only lead to excesses but would even guarantee exportation.
The aims and objectives of the program is summarised in one of the paragraphs of the Coal City Deputy Governor; Dr. Cecilia Ezeilo who represented Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi in the event when she noted that;
“… the state is making agriculture an all-season activity in order to further broaden and stabilize the role of farming as a source of sustainable employment, livelihood and constant supply of raw materials for our industries and for export.”
After duely commending the State CARES Committee chaired by the State Commissioner of Finance, Mrs. Adaonah Kene-Uyawunne for a job well done and advised that they should focus on the improved varieties of such crops in which Enugu state enjoys comparative advantages such as cassava and rice before encapsulating her information by emphasizing that the essence of targeting the indigent farmers is calculated towards achieving among other things;
” … economic empowerment, poverty alleviation, reduction in conflict-inducing social inequalities, boosting agricultural productivity and stimulating the rural economy of the state.”
Some of the notable dignitaries in attendance were;The Chairman, House Committee on Health and Agriculture, Hon. Sam Ngene, the Commissioner for Education, Prof. Uche Eze, his transport counterpart, Hon. Mathias Ekweremadu (Jnr.) and the SPA on Agriculture, Engr. Mike Ogbuekwe, among others.
The State Commissioner for Agriculture, Hon Matthew Idu in his remarks, called for proper monitoring of the implementation of the program to ensure that the set goals could be realised, and admonished the beneficiaries to resist every temptation of trading those items, reminding them that the program was also one of the means of alleviating the effects of Covid 19 whose wind blew no one good.
REPORT BY
BIBIAN ANEKWE NEWS
MEDIA CORRESPONDENT.
ENUGU DI N’AKACHUKWU MOVEMENT
