Kogi state government says about twenty thousand youths will be employed in the agriculture sector in the first quarter of this year.
The state commissioner for agriculture, Kehinde Oloruntoba stated this while interacting with journalists at the NUJ press centre Lokoja on the achievements of Governor Yahaya Bello’s in the sector.
Mr Oloruntoba revealed that four thousand five hundred youths and women would be engaged in the state owned rice farm at Omi in Yagba West local government area while one thousand youths had been empowered in fish farming across the three senatorial districts of the state.
According to Oloruntoba, beneficiaries of the fish farming programme would be handed ponds by the end of January and paid monthly stipend of fifteen thousand naira as support for a period of six months.
He explained that government was partnering a private firm to establish and train youths in greenhouse farms in Osara, Adavi Local council to create a vegetable hub in the state.
The commissioner further announced that arrangements had been concluded by the state government for take off of “APPEALS” a federal government initiative where Kogi was selected to benefit from a world bank grant to develop rice, cashew and cassava along all their value chains as it will generate ten thousand jobs for women & youths across the state.
He noted that through the grant, modular processing machines, seedlings and other farm inputs would be purchased for benefitting farmers.
The Commissioner gave an assurance that the state government was doing its best to ensure that anyone interested in agro business in the state got the right atmosphere to operate.
Credit: KapitaFM
