A leading governorship aspirant under the platform of the All Progressive Congress (APC) in Ondo state, Mr Wale Akinterinwa, has promised to address the issue of food crisis and youth joblessness in the state.
Akinterinwa gave the assurance during an interactive session with the Association of Retired Permanent Secretaries, Retired Senior Civil Servants, Ondo state chapter in Akure, the state capital.
According to him” one of my intentions to run is to focus more on the agriculture sector in order to address the issue of food crisis in the state.
” My focus will be slightly different from other aspirants, I will really focus more on agriculture, the truth is that today we are all hungry, we have the land mass, we are naturally farmers in our different communities.
“We are going to be very intentional about agriculture, it’s not going to be business as usual, the intervention funds that we can access in the area of agriculture is huge and we are going to be very radical about it. We are going to design programmes and bring in investors.
“We are going to be very radical in partnering with the investors because the land is ours, we all know that agriculture is the major employer of labour and we have a lot of young people all over the places roaming about the streets with no employment. The truth is that if they are well encouraged our society will be better of.
“So we are going to focus on agriculture and ensure that the whole chain is addressed. We are talking about processing from farm to the market and beyond the market.
“We must be looking for export opportunities for our products and government will be willing to support.
The former Finance commissioner in the state added that “We will ensure that farmers don’t suffer anymore, we must address this issue of food crisis in our state.
“There are lots of investors who are willing to put their money into agriculture. It would be my duty to be the Chief Marketing Officer of this state (if elected the governor) to let people know what we can offer and we cannot do it alone”, he added.
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