By Tasi'u Aminu
The visit to the university's main campus was to commission a particular water project sponsored for the Faculty of Agriculture (FOA) at one of the faculty's farms.
Peter Obi emphasized the need to prioritize Agriculture by investing more in Agriculture, noting that the economic state of the nation is alarming.
“If you look at the country today, Nigerians are spending most of their earnings on food. By producing more from agriculture, we would deal with the issue of hunger. Nigeria is the 109th hungriest country out of 125 countries in the world. We are now in the 20 most hungry countries worldwide and we shouldn't be at that stage,” Obi said.
“The reason why Ukraine is supplying us with food is because they have 60 percent of their land cultivated, and we have 60 percent of our land uncultivated. So we need to fight hunger, in doing this, we must provide a source of employment for our youth who are now in their productive age doing nothing, some of them have been taken to criminality.”
He encouraged investing in agriculture, saying that by investing in it, we are going to solve unemployment, fight hunger, deal with inflation and improve our export.
“The more poverty, the more you have criminality. I have been to prison and interviewed some of the prisoners. The responses I got from them were that they were involved in operations where they will get 30k or 50k. If the same person had something that would fetch him that amount, he would not be engaging in such criminal acts, the purpose of life is to solve problems, whether in government or not, we are all leaders in small ways. I'm a leader, and the job is not to complain but to take action.” He said.
The Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture, Prof A.D Isah expressed immense gratitude over the project and explained how the project is going to be a solution to the water problem they are facing at the farm.
Prof Isah also complained that students are finding it difficult to transport themselves from the faculty to the farms. He, therefore, made a request to the philanthropist, to help provide a vehicle that can convey students from the faculty to the various farms of the faculty.