LNRBDA restates commitment to crash food prices 

Leadership of the Lower Niger River Basin Development Authority (LNRBDA) covering Kogi and Kwara states, has said that it is committed to crashing prices of food items as mandated by President Bola Tinubu.

Speaking with journalists on the sidelines of a three-day training programme for staff of the authority, packaged by the Synergy Impact Development Centre, Ilorin, the Managing Director of the LNRBDA, Engineer George-Olumoroti Olusola, said that the management is determined to achieve the President’s mandate through multiple-season irrigation farming.

The managing director, who said that the mandate of the President to crash the price of food items is contained in his renewed hope agenda, explained that the authority has to provide staff focus and requisite training that meet the President’s mandate and directive through capacity training.

“By law, the mandate to manage water is with the LNRBA. We’re now trying to create an enabling environment that will support irrigation. We no longer want to have a one-season farming.

“We want to have multiple-season farming in a year so that there wouldn’t be a need for a dry or rainy season. When your farm has water, it doesn’t know whether it’s the dry or rainy season. With that, there’ll be more food. And when there’s more food in abundance, the price will drop in our markets,” he said.

ALSO READ: LNRBDA trains staff on enhanced service delivery

Speaking on the training programme, titled, ‘Improved capacity building in strategic planning, budgeting and effective cost control mechanism’, George-Olumoroti said that proper budget planning, scaling down and the ability to make the budget applicable and more effective are factors that drive the renewed hope agenda of the President.

He said, “We want to run a project with a smaller amount of money, yet we want to derive maximum benefit from it. We want to eliminate waste. We want to be more responsive and be able to execute projects that has direct impact on the community and on the food security agenda, which is our core mandate. So, we want to redirect our budget to tackle issues in the environment.

“The training hoped to improve and modernise skills of the workforce, as well as be up to date in terms of training, thinking, effectiveness and productivity in order to operate like experts.”

Also speaking, the executive director, Planning, Investigation, and Design of the LNRBDA, Engineer Alanamu Ayinla Abolore, said that the training programme was organised to improvethe capacity of staff of the authority, “because they’re always in the field and much is actually expected from them.

“We have the mandate of the president to crash the price of food items. And to achieve that, we have to make our staff know what the focus is and the requisite training that meets Mr President’s mandate and directive,” he said.

Also, speaking one of the participants, Mrs Zainab Ghali, expressed hope that the capacity training programme would improve her capacity to perform well on the job and help her carry out strategic planning to improve the area of budgeting and cost control of the authority to achieve the agenda of the President on economic development.