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10 January, 2016
Sunday Tribune
thepolity Security should not be left in the hands of FG alone —Amosun Ogun State governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, during the 2016 maiden media chat, held last week, provided answers to questions from some media practitioners on the state of things in the state since the commencement of his second term in office. Assistant Editor, OLAYINKA OLUKOYA, monitored the interview session. Excerpts:
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OUR Excellency, how can agriculture be used as a means of employment especially for young people out there vis-a-vis reviving farm settlements and rice plantation, among others? You said agriculture, but if you look at our five cardinal programmes, it was not just agriculture; we believe that it is agriculture that will lead us to industrialization, because gone are those days when you just farm, like subsistence farming. Now, we are not just talking mechanised farming, but farming that will take full advantage of the value chain that agriculture offers. And what do we mean by that, whatever we grow, we must process, whatever we process, we must market once the products are ready. So a lot of things like the presentation, the packaging and marketing are involved; everybody will be involved. Once that is done, we will attract all these investors, entrepreneurs to come and assist us in developing Ogun State. But what is the primary motive? If you look at it, the first in our five cardinal programme is education, the second is health, the third is agriculture that will lead to industrialisation and more of social service. Education won’t give you money, but education will be the bedrock, because if you are informed and educated, you will apply the knowledge into other areas like health, agriculture, infrastructural development or urban-rural development and so on. In fact, in all facets of human endeavour, if you are not educated, you cannot succeed. For us to be able to fund education, to fund health and other social amenities, we will need to have a fulcrum on which every other thing rests upon, and agriculture presents that opportunity particularly if you look at others. In fact, I want to say that even in Ogun State, if care is not taken, maybe half a million of our people that are not working are educated, young graduates, they don’t have anything doing. But what we are trying to do is to attract them, make agriculture to be very attractive to them and that’s why we are working on all the state farm settlements. Are you saying that the state government has already taken steps to invest in this regard? Agriculture takes time to materialise. It is not something that you invest today and tomorrow you are reaping; no! So, what we have done, of course, you mentioned some but you missed out on one. There is no state in Nigeria that does it the way we do. It is not just cassava for maybe garri, flour and so on; no. There are a lot of things you can use cassava for and these
are the reasons many people want to partner with us, because they need all the cassava that we can plant. There are a lot of other areas you can put cassava into use. So we are growing cassava now into what I call massive commercial quantity. Rice is very key. You just mentioned rice now, so is oil palm plantation. Before now, cocoa will live up to 9 or 10 years before you harvest, but with technology, there are new initiatives and new ways of doing things. Within three years now, you can begin to harvest. So, we have taken cassava, rice, oil palm plantation, cocoa and the last one which we know is a money-spinner and that is to now go into vegetable cultivation. And this will include tomatoes, pepper and so on. Again, we have now delved into the area of fruits, oranges, pineapples, banana and so on. Don’t forget that all of these companies now are now in Ogun State. We are telling them to do backward integration, so that not everybody will wake up in the morning to say that I want to go to government office and look for job. What we want to do is to let our people know that there is dignity in labour, they can even be employers of labour themselves, rather than maybe
wasting their time looking for jobs. Now, what have we done? We have partnered with the Bank of Industry (BoI); we put down N500 million for our young graduates so that they can go into small businesses. We are encouraging them to come and be employers of labour themselves. We have built farm houses and have about three of them in each of our senatorial districts. So, we are encouraging young graduates to delve into area they like. How have the youth been responding so far? Yes, as we speak now, we have about two or three success stories and thankfully, Ogun State will be 40 years and that is one of the projects that Mr. President will come and commission for us. We have one in Owowo; that is the pilot scheme. We are doing Cocoa in Alagbagba; we have in Odeda here and we have in Olomore. We are encouraging our young graduates to come and be part of what we are doing. The totality of what we are doing is that, once that is done, it will work positively on our economy, because if we do this, it will create wealth for our young ones. I am happy now that whatever egg or to-
mato we produce is sold out. Those young ones are happy because they are making money and have other people working for them. So, people will see what we have been doing, because we are going to showcase this. But once we are able to do this, we are getting our people to work, particularly our young ones. And we are going back to what I call cottage industries and that is one area where vocational training is key as well; so that when they are taught in all ramifications even in your farm settlement, something needs to be done. You don’t need to run around to start calling people from Ghana, Benin Republic, Togo. This is not the way we were brought up and that is why we are going back to our roots. So, agriculture will be the fulcrum on which all of these things will rest, together with our initiative in infrastructural development which I will still talk about. Though you have made so much emphasis on attracting foreign investors in the agriculture sector, one is still concerned about Ogun State, continues pg 35