By Dikachi Elemba, in Owerri
The Nigerian federal government has unveiled fresh measures to accelerate the pace of rural transformation and development across the 774 local government areas in the country aimed at stemming rural-urban migration and enhanced food security for the people.
Muhammed Abubakar, minister of agriculture and rural development, said that the idea is also meant to encourage interested farmers at the grassroots to embark on intensive and extensive farming for more food production in the country.
The minister stated this when he commissioned an asphalted five kilometer Ebenano Ekwe town hall village road in the Isu council area of Imo state.
Represented by Christian Iwuchukwu, the Imo State director of the federal ministry of agriculture and rural development, the minister said that a nation unable to feed itself is doomed, adding that it was in realisation of this that the federal government resolved to take the bull by the horns to achieve food security next year through the provision of necessary agricultural incentives to interested farmers and agricultural institutions, as well as massive rural transformation.
“My ministry is for food production and rural development, hence it places strong emphasis on rural agricultural activities where there are vast acres of land for both intensive and extensive farming.”
The minister regretted that the absence of access roads in most of the council areas of the country had continued to hamper the transportation of agricultural produce to the urban centres where they are mostly needed as a result of heavy population density, stressing that it was against this background that the federal government had resolved to extend the facilities to communities for easy movement of the people, goods and services.
The benefiting indigenes of the community expressed gratitude to the federal government for the gesture, noting that it would not only ease their transportation difficulties but also motivate them more into agriculture.
