Lawmakers of the Lagos State House of Assembly on Friday held simultaneous stakeholders’ meetings with their constituents with renewed commitments to boost food security and sufficiency in the state.
They also called for collaboration by the stakeholders to end food insecurity.
Speaking in his Agege Constituency 1, the Speaker of the House, Rt. Hon. Mudashiru Obasa, identified food insecurity as a multi-faceted challenge requiring the efforts of the government and the people to resolve.
This year’s stakeholders’ meeting is the ninth in the series and has the theme: ‘Ensuring Food Security for Sustainable Future: Youth Participation and Home-Grown Farming’.
Dr. Obasa said the Lagos Assembly was committed to ensuring food security in line with the United Nation’s sustainable
development goals of eradication of poverty.
“We at the Lagos State House of Assembly are committed to making Lagos an producing state and not just a consuming state in the agriculture value chain to tackle the present-day reality of food insufficiency.
“Our commitment is exemplified through transformational laws and policy supervision in the agricultural sector,” he said noting that with the collaboration of the Assembly, the government of the state has made giant strides in the agriculture sector.
He listed some of the agricultural initiatives to include the setting up of the 34-hectare Ikorodu Fish Farm Estate which has the capacity to produce and process 10,000 tons of fish per year partnering with 400 fish farmers in the State.
He mentioned the AGRIC-YES
programme and “the Oke-Aro and Gberigbe Pig Farm Estates that currently partners with 1,200 farmers and have the capacity of housing and processing 88,000 mature pigs per annum.
“It is important to reiterate that, on our part as lawmakers, we have also created an enabling environment for farming activities to thrive in the state, particularly through the passage of anti-open grazing of livestock Law in September, 2021.”
He said to achieve food sufficiency, farming capacity needs to be widened while residents should consider animal husbandry.
In his opening remarks, the chairman of Agege Local Government Area, Ganiyu Egunjobi, identified insecurity and non-availability of low interest loan for the youth population as responsible for the food crisis.
“This meeting cannot come at a better time. The problem responsible for the food shortage are many among which are insecurity that has prevented many farmers from accessing their farms. Farming in Nigeria is no longer attractive to the teeming youths.
“I want to suggest to the government at all levels to subsidise farming and also give loans at very low interest to farmers. The government should also improve on existing physical infrastructures in farming communities that would discourage urban migration and encourage youths to embrace farming. Farming and youth unemployment are recurring issues which require multidimensional interventions to tackle,” he said.
The keynote speaker, Dr. Akinyemi Olusegun of the Lagos State Ministry of Agriculture, urged the youths and residents in the state to engage in urban farming.
“In Lagos, we are more than 22 million and as a result we have a huge need for food. People want to eat and engage in food business,” he said urging youths to focus on home-grown farming.
