News: Empowering Unemployed Graduates Through Agribusiness

After being camped for 21 days and given intensive training on agribusiness, over 150 youths in Kwara State, who are mostly university graduates graduated last week amidst zeal and enthusiasm to rule the world and overcome the unemployment challenge, Daily Trust reports.

The 21-day training with the theme, "Linking women and youths for sustainable green development and income generation through Agric Business", was organised by the Islamic Green Club Empowerment Initiative in collaboration with the office of the Special Assistant to the President on Ethics and Values, Dr. Sarah Jibril.

The programme, which was supported by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Ministry of Agriculture and the National Directorate of Employment, was meant for both Muslims and Christians and featured participants from the 16 local government areas of the state.
From the theme of the training held at Mohammed Kamaldeen University, Ilorin, the intention was discernible; it was designed to expose the participants to the rudiments of various agricultural ventures towards empowering them for self-sustenance and enhancing food security in Nigeria. Despite the huge potentials in agriculture, stakeholders and experts have decried what they called the lackadaisical attitude of youths to agriculture. It is indeed one untapped area capable of solving the unemployment problem in Nigeria.

However, the training programme was seen as a vista of hope and confirmation of the growing interest in agriculture as a profitable and income generating venture for both the employed and unemployed youths.

The participants were trained in various agricultural areas including poultry, fishery, snail rearing, fish smoking, grass cutter rearing, sheep and goat rearing, while other vocations like beads making, soap making, tiger drink (kunun aya) were also included.

The coordinator of the training programme, Dr. Abdulrahman Badiru, disclosed that majority of the participants were graduates who were unemployed, while the rest had postgraduate diplomas and master's degrees. He expressed joy that the participants were eager and enthusiastic to start on their own, saying this was an indication that Nigerian youths have started appreciating the potentials in agriculture.

He said: "We have to make them understand that they should look beyond the white collar job. There are ways they can be self-employed and they can be sources of employment to others. They can be on their own and create job opportunities for those that are coming behind them. If those that have been trained today are able to train another 10 people, those ones too are able to train another 10 people, we want to have a value chain whereby even if you don't get a government job, you would still survive and live well.

"Today we thank God we are shifting gradually towards agriculture and I am sure before the coming of oil, we had agriculture as the mainstay of the country. Agriculture is one of the largest employers of labour.

"Many of them (participants) are eager to go out there to put into practice what they have learnt. At least with just little capital, you can start something and once you are able to start something, you would start growing."

The participants were given training on the various aspects of agriculture while they later specialised based on their areas of interest. Some of the participants who spoke to Daily Trust described the training as life-changing, saying all the vocations are profitable and they are ready to explore them in making ends meet.

A trainee, Paul Gbenga Emmanuel, who specialised in fishery, explained that the 21-day course had exposed him to ample knowledge about fish production.

He said: "I believe I can also start fishery at the back of my home whereby I can start in a small scale production. From there I will start producing and start selling to people outside. We have different types of fish production. We have the fingerlings, fry, juvenile and the female fish.

"Nowadays, fingerlings are sold at the rate of N20 to N50 but people don't sell fingerlings in Kwara State, they only sell the table size and the juvenile for them to fry.

"Now that they have empowered us, I believe I can sell fingerlings to people in Kwara State for them to rear fish so that we can have more farmers rearing fish in the state."

On her part, Mrs. Ayo Imam, whose specialisation was snail rearing, says rearing of snail is good and profitable but lamented that most Nigerians have not realised that.

She said: "It is very profitable in the sense that it is very easy to farm. The only thing that snails need is care, they need care and for you to attend to them. So what we learnt in snail farming is that for commercial purpose, you can use two types of snail, we have the Archatina Archatina, that is the one that is mostly used for snail farming. You can house your snails in tyre or you build a plenary for them; that is by using wood to build them.

When you get your specie, that is the Archatina Archatina, you can get about 10 of them. All you just do is to feed them and their feeding is very easy, mostly they feed on vegetable, banana leaves. The only thing is that it takes a long duration before it would be mature for you to give it out for sale. It takes about 12 to 24 months and it is very good for everybody."
Mrs. Imam lauded the organisers of the programme for the knowledge impacted on them, saying agriculture remains the only hope for Nigeria's future.

"They gave us quality training. In fact I don't think there is any trainee here that would not be able to tell you one or two things they have learnt.

"We thought agric is for the old and poor but from the training we were told that agric is not for the old and poor. It is a very good business because our oil will soon get dry and when our oil gets dry, we have to go back to agriculture. So this is a very good way for us to start; this is a very good foundation", she added.

Giving further insight into fish smoking, Aminu Mariam Abidemi disclosed that a new method of smoking fish was explored because the ones being smoked have a lot of carbon monoxide. "So we now tried to create a new method of smoking fish which does not have, or has less carbon monoxide. We smoked our fish under a very good and conducive environment."

She also said: "We also turned it by adding salt to remove the slippery part of the fish. We have two types of fish smoking methods; we have the hydrotated and unhydrotated. I practicalised the two. The hydrotated is the one that has seasonings - we added little flavour like Maggi, and other seasonings. The unhydrotated is the one that we smoked raw.”

Sulaiman Waheed whose area of interest is grass cutter rearing said: "Grass cutter which the Yoruba people call Oya is a herbivorous animal that eats grass. Grass cutter is socially acceptable and profitable. For instance, in Nigeria, a colony of grass cutters costs up to N50,000. So there is a lot of money in rearing of grass cutter."

Other activities during the training were the products that were made and exhibited at the closing ceremony which was attended by representatives of the CBN and other sponsors.

The ceremony was chaired by Chairman of the Federal Character Commission (FCC), Professor Shuaib Abdulraheem represented by Barrister Akinmade Yahaya, while the Special Adviser to the CBN Governor on Islamic Financial and Economic Matters, Dr. Yakubu Umar, represented the apex bank.

Dr. Umar expressed the readiness of the bank to assist the participants, urging them to approach their state's Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) office to access from the CBN N200 billion intervention for entrepreneurs.

Source: Dailytrust