FACULTY of Agriculture of the Obafemi Awolowo University’s Faculty on Thursday, November 14, conferred a Distinguished Alumni Award on Aare Egbe-Omo Balogun of Ibadanland, Chief Adegboyega Taofeek Adegoke.
The ceremony which held at the Oduduwa Hall of the university, was part of the 13th Faculty of Agriculture’s Lecture and Awards with the theme “Mitigating Rising Food Prices: The Underlying Issues” delivered by Dr Adetunji Oredipe, Senior Agricultural Economist, World Bank.
According to the Dean, Faculty of Agriculture, OAU, Professor Akeem Tijani, the award bestowed on Adegoke is in recognition of his numerous generous donations and projects executed in the Faculty of Agriculture.
Chief Adegoke used the occasion to donate N20 million, which he said must be tailored towards the resuscitation of the Faculty Teaching and Research Farm.
Speaking after receiving the award, Chief Adegoke said he felt happy and elated that his little contributions to the faculty and the university were recognised.
In a statement on Sunday, Chief Adegoke said the award is also a challenge for him to do more to both the faculty and the university as an alumni member.
Speaking further he said farming is key to the development of any Nation, Nigeria included.
According to him: “Sustainable farming is key to the development of any country, because if you cannot feed your citizens why are you in existence as a country.
“Therefore, farming is key and we have to encourage our people to farm. Like this faculty of agriculture, I expect that the faculty should be the one feeding the university community. The faculty should set different days for the selling of produce and other farm products to the university community. Let’s say Monday for livestock, Tuesday for Gari, Wednesday for Fish, Thursday for Eggs and Friday for vegetables et cetera.
“The University community should be buying foodstuffs from the Faculty at affordable prices not from outside the campus. That is the way to go. What are they doing with the farm? If they lack resources, they should let us know. That is why I donated N20M for the resuscitation of the farm.
“Likewise too, the country should also take the issue of farming more seriously, so that there can be food security. The issue of continuous increase in food prices will be a thing of the past if there are enough coming from the farms. I want to encourage every individual to go into cottage farming while well to do and governments at all levels should invest more on mechanised farming to tackle the issue of food shortage.”
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