Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture, Adesina Akinwunmi, has announced that about 6,618 youths have been trained on agriculture business and large scale farming.
Akinwunmi made the statement at the Ekiti State University, Ado Ekiti during a programme to enlighten youths on how to create wealth, convened by the United Mandate.
Akinwunmi, who was represented by Blaise Ogbozor, the Higher Education Officer in charge of gender and youth said young Nigerians were not making adequate use of the opportunities afforded to them by the government because of ignorance.
He said: “Nigerian youths are so cynical and unaware of what is going on around them and especially about the government policies. Since 2012, government has been following a programme to revolutionise agriculture.
“We must not leave agriculture to the old people and village people alone.”
Also speaking at the event was the South-West programme officer of United Mandate, Olufemi Lawson, who explained the mission of the United Mandate to reach out to youths across the country.
Lawson remarked thus: “The mentality of Nigerian youth is that government must provide job to them after school. The truth is that there is no government anywhere in the world that can employ all the youths.
“We realised that there are windows of opportunity being created by government at federal and state levels like SMEDAN, YouWin, SURE-P, NAPEP etc.
“We have come to enlighten students on how to tap into these opportunities. You don’t have to be a graduate before you can access some of these opportunities. By this, youth can become job creators instead of job seekers.”
