The Executive Secretary of Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Arc. Sonny Echono has enjoined Vice Chancellors to put more energy for actualisation of agriculture transformation while urging them to operationalise the centres of excellence as soon as possible.
Echono stated this in Abuja on Wednesday, during the vice chancellors roundtable on the implementation of Agricultural Research and Innovation Fellowship for Africa (ARIFA) in Nigeria with the theme,tagged, “Building -Vicosa Symposium Action Plan.”
“My charge to you is to make this a personal mission because I’m very confident that if we get it right in agriculture in this country half of our problems will be solved because it is the easiest means of creating jobs,” he said.
He said if they can find modern ways of doing things that will significantly improve revenue because as the yield increases, revenues increase and it makes it more attractive.
“As we adopt new technology, develop our mechanization and irrigation we will found opportunities through commercial agriculture and we will be able to absorb the graduates that will produce because most of the issue if you notice, more than 60 percent of those who graduate with agriculture go on to do other things with their lives because we don’t have commercial farming that can absorb this workforce we produced.
He said Nigeria can learn a lot from Brazil through partnership given their track record in the area of agriculture, adding that everything is built through national food security and it is the responsibility of all of us to ensure that happens.
Speaking, the Executive Secretary of Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), Dr. Yemi Akinbamijo said the workshop is to have an internationalization process, saying that the outcomes from the meeting will feed into Post-Viçosa Sympo Action Plan, holding at University of Lagos in July.
He said the meeting will focus on priority areas of demand for increased capacity in STEM, establishment of innovation platforms, among others.
