The Enugu state Governor, Peter Mbah, has said that since assuming office, the administration’s investment drive has begun lifting poor citizens out of poverty.
This was as the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) praised the governor for his vision of sustaining IFAD programmes in the state, noting that the critical success of the projects was sustainability.
Mr Mbah asserted on Thursday while receiving the IFAD’s Associate Vice President (AVP), Donal Brown, and members of his team who were on a working visit to the state.
The governor, represented by his deputy, Ifeanyi Ossai, a lawyer, expressed appreciation to the United Nations specialised agency for the assistance and intervention the state had received in agriculture.
In a statement by Uju Nnaji of the deputy governor’s office, he noted that his administration sees and exploits agriculture as a low-hanging fruit and one of the accessible routes for residents to escape poverty.
He explained that the IFAD programme was immensely beneficial to the people because of its objectives, which target rural and smallholder farmers, who are the primary producers of the daily food consumed in the country.
“Just as I have noted earlier, on the desk where we are, we may forget the link and the role the smallholder and rural farmers play in the economy. But you will always miss the link if you do all the high-level policy formulations and the rural farmers are not accommodated. It is the aggregation of rural farmer holdings that come up to your GDP, and when you measure them back in the lives of our people, you will see that it is huge,” the governor said.
He stressed that through the proper support and intervention, rural farmers and smallholder farmers are now able to meet their financial needs, such as paying school fees for their children, access to maternal healthcare, and savings.
“We look forward to a more robust relationship with you because experiences have also shown that we must work towards improving what you have done. And I know that your resources are not elastic, that at some point you will stop the programme, and we must sustain it to ensure seamless continuity and even improve on what you’re leaving behind.
“As such, we want to develop a homegrown relationship with you that enables the investment you have made to become self-sustaining so that whenever you’re in Africa or Nigeria, you can stop by or look back at your legacy,” he added.
While lamenting the perennial post-harvest losses farmers have been facing in the state, Mr Mbah appealed to IFAD for more support to enable the creation of aggregation centres around farm clusters for production preservation that would minimise post-harvest challenges.
“Again, we are looking at whatever support we can get to encourage commercial farmers because we know we have commercial farmers who do the big ticket transaction. It is much easier for them to sustain the smallholder farmers than whatever programme the government can do.
“When they support the smallholder farmers and provide them with inputs, they teach them skills and can even advance credit to them because they will be encouraged, knowing there is a ready market. So, we are looking for help from you to build some medium to high-level processing centres,” he further added.
Speaking earlier, Mr Brown said he was in Enugu to deepen their conversation with the state government on the way both bodies could strengthen their interests and to inspect some of the projects funded by IFAD in the last couple of years.
“We have come to Enugu state to look at some of the work we’ve funded through the government of Nigeria. And we selected Enugu because we have excellent news about the work happening here,” he stressed.
The IFAD boss further commended the governor for his drive to sustain the projects and programme, as it is the key to ensuring the aims of IFAD in the country are actualised.
While noting that IFAD had about one billion dollars in investment in Nigeria, which included different sectors and subsectors such as agriculture, processing and production, Mr Brown said they were looking for ways to support the government to improve food production and food security, particularly now that Nigeria is facing a food crisis.
Sam Diala is a Bloomberg Certified Financial Journalist with over a decade of experience in reporting Business and Economy. He is Business Editor at THEWILL Newspaper, and believes that work, not wishes, creates wealth.
