The Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, said he was impressed with the success of the Federal Government’s dry season farming initiative in Jigawa.
He said this during his working visit and inspection of farms in Auyo and Ringim council areas, Jigawa, on Thursday.
The minister said his team visited Auyo to see the efforts of rice and wheat growers were making in order to ensure food security in the country.
“It is not out of nothing that the president changed the name of the ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, because it is only when you have food security that you can have any kind of security in this nation,” he said.
Idris said his visit was a clear demonstration of President Bola Tinubu’s commitment towards addressing the problems associated with food security, adding that his team was also in Auyo to confirm that federal government’s interventions were put to use as designed.
He called on Nigerians to go back to the farm and enjoy federal government’s support in the entire agriculture value chain for mass production of food in the country.
“You are aware of the kind of effort that the federal government is making through the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security in terms of support for inputs, soft loans and everything the farmers require so that they will achieve self-sufficiency.
“A few years ago the story wasn’t like this, and with the kind of intervention that the federal government is doing Nigeria will attain its desired objective of food security,” the minister said.
He, however, called on those involved in kidnapping and all sorts of criminal activities to go back to the farm.
He added that they would also be given all the necessary support so that Nigeria will be self-sufficient and achieve food security.
Earlier, the Managing Director of the Hadejia Jama’are River Basin Development Authority, Mr Ma’amun Da’u Aliyu, said the federal government assisted dry season project consisted of seven thousand hectares of land with 57 million irrigation water.
Aliyu said the scheme was recently rehabilitated under the Transforming Irrigation Management in Nigeria (TRIMING) where N17 billion was spent on rehabilitation and supply of machinery to farmers.
The TRIMING project manager, Mr Nasiru El- Mansir, said the project started operation around 2014 with 500 million dollars loan from the World Bank.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that TRIMING is a special intervention scheme of the Federal Government, aimed at promoting sustainable development of irrigated agriculture in the country.
The aim is to oversee and rehabilitate five irrigation schemes in the country, and Hadejia Valley Irrigation Scheme is one of them.
“We have the Hadejia Valley, Kano River Irrigation Scheme, Sokoto River Basin Development Authority, Middle River Basin and the upper Niger River Basin in Dadinkowa,” said El- Mansir.
He said the Hadejia Valley scheme had 19 sectors, and the potential agricultural hectarage is 6,000 hectares but due to the dilapidated conditions of infrastructure in the last 15 to 20 years, about 50 per cent of the hectarage could not to be irrigated.
He, however, said after the intervention of TRIMING project, 15 out of the 19 sectors were 100 per cent rehabilitated and four new sectors were constructed.
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According to him, the farmers are now able to cultivate three times a year because of the infrastructure provided at Auyo.
NAN also reports that most of the farmers told the minister that the federal government’s dry-season farming initiative had empowered them and produced many millionaires. (NAN)
