Prof. Ibrahim Umar-Abubakar, the Executive Director, Institute for Agricultural Research (IAR) Zaria, on Saturday lauded the National Assembly for training women and youths on modern maize production and value addition.
He gave the commendation at the closing ceremony of training of 20 beneficiaries drawn from Charanci Local Government Area of Katsina State held at the institute in Zaria, Kaduna State.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the training was organised by the National Assembly to encourage self reliance.
The Director, who was represented by Dr Mohammed Bello-Hassan, Head of Agricultural Extension unit, IAR, said the programme was part of the Federal Government’s Youths and Women Empowerment Scheme.
Umar-Abubakar said: “This comes under the constituency project sponsored by the National Assembly.
“This training specifically comes from the House member representing Charanchi federal constituency in Katsina; they usually bring their people to this institute for training on any specified crop.
“In this training, we concentrate on maize production and value addition and the training is a kind of chain reaction or train the trainers, because we don’t have the capacity to go to all the rural areas to train the farmers,” he said.
According to him, those trained are expected to train other farmers at the grassroots levels.
He assured that the training would reduce the burden on the institute to visit various communities to disseminate the information.
On his part, the representative of the National Assembly, Alhaji Usman Mohammed-Mu’azu, said the essence of the programme was to give youths and women a sense of hope.
He added that those trained now have the opportunity, knowledge and wisdom to get back to their localities to train other farmers.
“They are trained on how to cultivate maize, process it and add value to it. They are given adequate knowledge on how to ensure that everything in maize is processed for onward use.
“Even the leaves of the maize is important and economical, nothing in maize that is not useful,” he noted.
He said that beneficiaries of the training would be assisted with seeds, fertilisers and other farm inputs as well as cash to enable them set up businesses to become self reliant.
Some of the beneficiaries, Malam Abdulmutallib Yahaya and Malama Halima, appreciated both the sponsors of the programme and the institute for organising the training.
They said they were encouraged by what they had learnt to actively participated in agricultural production in view of the modern techniques acquired.
The farmers said they were surprised to understand that in one hectare of land a farmer would be able to produce 60 to 80 bags of maize instead of the traditional 15 bags per hectare.
They promised to extend the knowledge to other farmers in their respective areas for the benefit of their communities and entire nation.
