Osun, Ekiti, Lagos Partner To Create Jobs Through Agriculture

The first edition of Agbeloba Agribusiness Forum 2013 held at Ikogosi Warm Spring Resort, in Ekiti State.
The event was hosted by the Governor of Ekiti State, Dr Kayode Fayemi but had in attendance his counterpart from Lagos and Osun states. It also had in attendance, representatives from the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and the Chairman, Senate Committee on Agriculture.
It was aimed at fostering focused and high impact public-private dialogue on sustainable and inclusive agribusiness sector as Nigeria seeks to add 20million metric tonnes to the domestic food supply by 2015 and create 3.5 million jobs through agriculture.
During the plenary session with the governors and potential investors as well as key policy makers in the Agriculture sector, Lagos State Governor, Raji Fashola stated that the structure of the Federal Government is too far away from the places where the impact is most needed but as far away as they can be, if they focus on “enabling things to be done rather than seeking to do things by themselves, then there will be much more development in quicker time.”
His counterpart from the State of Osun, Rauf Aregbesola challenged the Federal Government to guarantee minimum prices for commodities as this is the best support they can give the Agriculture sector rather than bothering about budget.
Governor Fayemi encouraged that stakeholders should focus on whatever can be done at the micro level to get the necessary results as that will help the efforts of the government at the national level.
The forum was seen as an eye opener as to what could be achieved in other states and participants were expected to use the platform to form partnerships towards actualizing a strategic business agenda and engineering a major turn-around in Nigeria’s agricultural sector.
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