Yemisi Dada
In a bid to ensure food sufficiency and security, five hundred vulnerable farming households in Ikorodu and Badagry areas of Lagos have received free Agricultural inputs to cultivate for feeding and harvesting for sales.
This is courtesy of an NGO, Caritas Nigeria under its Building Sustainable Livelihoods in Vibrant Community, B-SLiC, project.
At the launch at Ikorodu North LCDA, Director of Humanitarian Services, Caritas Nigeria, Mrs Nkese Udongwo, said the intervention was to encourage climate smart Agriculture and empower the less privileged in rural communities through subsistence farming while enjoining them to sell parts of their harvest to be financially independent.
While noting that Caritas Nigeria is the humanitarian arm of the Catholic Bishop of Nigeria, Mrs Udongwo, appealed to the beneficiaries not to resell the improved varieties of corn and cassava stems given to them but to farm with them and enjoy the benefit thereafter within three months of cultivation.
“A lot of you have been trained so we expect you to utilize these Agricultural inputs well for the benefit of your immediate families and the communities you came from, do not hoard the knowledge to yourself, train others in your environment so that at the end of the day the project will reduce poverty in our communities. Please do not sell these Agricultural inputs, use them for your own good so that the purpose of the B-SLiC Project will not be defeated”
In a message to the occasion, the Archbishop of Catholic Diocese in Lagos, Archbishop Adewale Martins, thanked those who supported the course of putting smiles on the faces of the poor in the society while the Executive Secretary, Caritas Nigeria, Reverend father Peter Babangida, urged the state and federal governments to prioritize the welfare of the masses who elected them into power by revamping the economy and supporting small and large scale farmers for food sufficiency.
B-SLiC Project Manager, Mr Bankole Akinyele, said over two thousand, five hundred households benefited from the Agricultural inputs project, homestead farming and livestock husbandry in Lagos and Ekiti state in the last one month with a call on beneficiaries who have been trained ahead on organic fertilizer to utilize the seedlings and become employers of labour.
“Caritas has invested hugely in training the beneficiaries ahead, it is not about giving out Agricultural inputs alone, we have trained them on production of organic fertilizer to use on their farms and also bag for sales, so we are hopeful that the objectives of feeding the most vulnerable in the rural communities are met by sustainable agriculture farming using small spaces in their homes for direct consumption and others for sales”
Appreciating the gesture, Head of Agriculture and Social Services Department, Ikorodu North LCDA, Mr Olalekan Kuti and the traditional ruler of Isiu Community, Oba David Raji-Balogun, commended Caritas Nigeria for investing in their communities to improve the livelihood of people in hard-to-reach areas in Lagos while some beneficiaries promised to judiciously use the farm inputs.
“We are indeed grateful, many of us have wanted to go into farming but we do not have the privilege but Caritas Nigeria located us in our remote areas, we say thank you and we promised not to disappoint you, by the time you come back in the next three to six months, we will be harvesting from our farms, we will not sell the Agricultural inputs but use it well. Thank you and God bless you all in Caritas”, beneficiaries said
Each beneficiary received ten kilogram bag of corn grains, five bundles of cassava stems and a sixteen liter Knapsack sprayer.