NO fewer than 40 youths selected from different local government areas of Nasarawa State on Friday completed a training programme on modern maize and sorghum production and value-chain at the Institute for Agricultural Research (IAR), Zaria.
The training was sponsored by Sen. Abdullahi Adamu (APC Nasarawa State) under the National Assembly Constituency Project.
Speaking at the closing ceremony held at the IAR, Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, the Institute Director, Prof. Ibrahim Umar-Abubakar urged the beneficiaries to be good ambassadors of the university and the institute.
The Director, who was represented by the IAR Deputy Director, Prof. Dauda Yusuf, observed that the essence of the training was to acquaint the beneficiaries with modern maize and sorghum farming techniques and value chain.
This, according to him, would enable the participants not only to become self-sufficient but employers of labour in the agricultural value chain.
He encouraged the beneficiaries to create a social media platform to facilitate discussion, deliberation, questions and feedback on what they have learnt as well as areas of difficulties.
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While appreciating the sponsor of the programme, Umar-Abubakar urged other members of the National Assembly to emulate the kind gesture towards addressing the rate of unemployment.
Umar-Abubakar said: “This programme comes under the constituency project sponsored by the National Assembly, they usually bring their people to this institute for training on a number of mandate crops.
“In this training, we concentrated on maize and sorghum production with value addition, and the training is a kind of chain reaction to train the trainers because we don’t have the capacity to go to all the rural areas to train the farmers.”
In her speech, Prof. Shukurat Adunni-Sanni, Assistant Director, Extension and Monitoring said beneficiaries had received adequate knowledge and training skills to train other farmers at the grassroots levels.
She assured that the training would reduce the burden on the institute to visit various communities in person to disseminate the information.
Responding on behalf of other beneficiaries, Mr Yusuf Zakari and Mrs Anna Yusuf-Johnson assured to make judicious use of the knowledge acquired for the benefit of all.
They advised farmers to be actively involved in the cultivation of their farms to avoid being cheated by those employed to cultivate their farmlands.
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