Umuahia — PRESIDENT Umaru Musa Yar’Adua yesterday called on Nigerian youths to go into aggressive cocoa farming, saying that his administration was determined to encourage them in that sector.
The President said the call has become necessary because of the critical role cash crops, such as cocoa are contributing to the nation’s GDP. He described cocoa as presently “the largest

The President, in deed, challenged the youths to see cocoa as a crop not only of the present, but also of the future.

To boost inters in cocoa, Yar’Adua announced that a substantial
Amount of money was committed to the promotion of cocoa production in Nigeria. Addressing the closing ceremony of the 5th National Cocoa Day hosted by Abia state, President Yar’Adua disclosed that his administration has achieved 7% in the agricultural sector because of the need to reposition the sector in an effort to diversify the nation’s revenue which had hitherto depended on oil.

Yar’Adua who was represented by Vice President Jonathan Goodluck commended the interest shown by the cocoa producing states and pledged more support from the Federal Government. According to Yar’Adua, the nation’s cocoa production has increased from 170,000 metric tones to about 360,000 metric tones in 2007, and expressed hope that it will increase more.

The president also noted that cocoa farming is now a major source of livelihood in West Africa and Central Africa, which he said is also a major source of their economic revenues to tune of over $6 billion in the two regions.

“In Nigeria today, cocoa provides employment to thousands of rural households as farmers, and in sub-urban areas. It employs thousands of of people and is a major source of income for most of the economic and social activities, such as infrastructural development, education, health and entertainment.

Yar’Adua noted that the reduction in oil revenue and global economic recession has informed the government’s decision to have a paradigm shift and diversify to other sectors.

In his speech, Abia state governor, Chief Theodore Orji who was represented by his deputy, Chris Akomas, enumerated the programmes the government has initiated to encourage cocoa and other farmers.

He expressed the interest of the state to assess from the N200 billion for farmers in the state.
”Even though we informed the Minister of Agriculture yesterday, permit us Your Excellency to formally notify you that Abia State is interested in a huge chunk of the N200 Billion the Federal Government has set aside for the empowerment of commercial and large scale farmers nationwide.

”We are major cocoa producers, we are also dominant in Oil Palm, Rubber, Rice, Cashew, Cassava, Maize, Yam, Cocoa Yam and several other cash crops and with the right incentives, we could surpass any target set for us.

”I intimated the house on most of the efforts we have put in towards sustainable Cocoa Development in Abia State and urged Nigeria to go back to her rich agricultural potentials to serve as a back-up revenue base alongside Crude Oil”, Orji said.

What do you expect from the visionless president who is busy sharing his daughters as third and fourth hand wife to serving State governors. As far as governance is concerned, Yar'adua is the worst president in the whole universe.

yara-dumb

u are a slowpoke. what encouragement and incensitives did u provide to urge the youth **********

common my freind wakey wakey

leadership by example, how many of his children are into cocoa farming?
like obj like yar adua.

Na wah ooo
Just a few months ago, some malicious beings on this forum bet with their lives on how yaradua will bring heaven down to nigeria through EFCC's farida.

ikeyman00:

yara-dumb

u are a slowpoke. what encouragement and incensitives did u provide to urge the youth **********

common my freind wakey wakey

i supported you

Let Yarádua's children lead the way and we will follow. Nonsense!

Na wa OOOOO!!
orna sure say if i follow this biz many ppl no go won b like me within the next few days??

Jus wondering brother. . .

He forgets to discuss the health hazards that come with cocoa farming,

my grandma was a cocoa farmer and now she has issues with her eyes because of the dust, anyways, maybe he should invest in technological methods to decrease the health hazards associated with cocoa farming.

OBVIOUS:

He forgets to discuss the health hazards that come with cocoa farming,

my grandma was a cocoa farmer and now she has issues with her eyes because of the dust, anyways, maybe he should invest in technological methods to decrease the health hazards associated with cocoa farming.

ok abeg ma ppl wetin orna suggest make we go in to now since orna dey criticize him idea- -Fishing?

He's got good ideas. However, he needs to elaborate more on the government's plan and unveil any plans/initiatives asap.

For those of you saying he lacks vision, well I disagree. If oil runs out today in Nigeria, we will be left behind and forgotten like Sudan, Eritrea and those sub-Saharan countries with no resources.

Again his ideas are good, but he needs to back it up.

ElRazur:

He's got good ideas. However, he needs to elaborate more on the government's plan and unveil any plans/initiatives asap.

For those of you saying he lacks vision, well I disagree. If oil runs out today in Nigeria, we will be left behind and forgotten like Sudan, Eritrea and those sub-Saharan countries with no resources.

Again his ideas are good, but he needs to back it up. 

I disagree, he does lack vision. It is all well and good for anyone to say we will build roads, we will awaken agric sector and other sectors to diversify the economy, we will fix the power situation to improve quality of life and business, etc. Thats all well and good and anyone can say that, what shows real vision is actually being able to come up with a design or feasible plan to achieveing such, i.e. something tangible that can be worked on or developed. We can't eat words and after close to two years now of being president and pretty much achieving nothing i would have to say he DOES lack vision and does not know what on earth he is doing or supposed to do. Someone that apparently loses sleep over the power situation without being able to do anything to remedy the situation? Someone who "laments" on being excluded from G20 meetings without any plan backed up with substabnce as opposed to wishful thinking of how to get the country developed? What vision has he?

SkyBlue, I think we are saying the same thing here mostly. Only that in different language. Like I said, his ideas are good, but he needs to back it up. Which is more or less what you are saying.

So the youth await for this guy to say something before doing something. Wow.What a dull moment at Umuahia. Guys are into anything, marrying abroad to remain there, stealing, 419, killings and stuff, good or bad. A pal left his yr3 Computer science program for an American college and last time announced he gonna marry there, the parents almost passed out here. He won't allow them ruin him.You don't even allow ur parents to tell you what is what now on.

Yaradu'a Dull, graduated from Chemistry, abi na lie? So let his second degree be agriculture with options in Cash cropping and cocoa will shoot out.He encourages only corruption and marrying one's daughters to corrupt public office holders. He has nothing to offer like other past riggers.Only talk talk!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!When the oil finishes, we will surely dismember.

Foolish president, let his children start as an example

There is absolutely nothing wrong with people going in to cash crop farming. The problem here is we have a president urging youths, not business owners. Naira 200 billion dollars available to farmers in abia state alone? Problem is we have had similar programs in the past, and in the very same state. How much of that money actually gets to the farmers, and in this case, the graduates looking for help to start up in the industry?

@encomium

What do you expect from the visionless president who is busy sharing his daughters as third and fourth hand wife to serving State governors.

I no longer pay attention to what the President says, because i have lost faith in him. He is full of rhetoric without action.

1.We will declare emergency on power, 2 years and no action, instead Presidency now budget to cover Generators for Aso Rock.

2. We will declare emergency on the Niger Delta, 2 years later nothing is happening, the boys have grown wild, infrastructures have collapsed.

No electoral reform

No Bakassi

No hospitals

No roads

No schools

NO VISION

Forget the rhetoric about cocoa, it is another avenue to feather party loyalists nests.

No Comment

i totally agreed with every member of dis forum, the president lacks vision and ideas to drive naija economy to d promise land. we have different problems dat needs urgent solutions but despite all problems, d naija youth still need to do some urgent to make livelihood, so dat our future will not b bleak. our leaders has failed us d younger generation and we need to position ourselve 4 leadership n d nearest future cos change most come to dis great country call naija.

If the govt has some kinda financial assistance in place to help the youth secure the lands, secure the seed and some machineries to do the job, there is nothing wrong in the cocoa farming at all.
I only have a problem when a govt is making noise and yet knows that the youth has no means of financing such project.
Anyways, this guy has been in office for almost 2 years and nothing has been achieved.

How do you encourage people with out plans, Our leaders will just say what ever they want for the sake of giving speech. how do you encourage people with out having a good agricultural agency to motivate this youth to want to venture into farming, You dont have even a campaign team for agricultural development and crusade that will encourage this youths

As a matter of fact, i'd be going into full scale farming as soon as i've got enough capital to sustain my activities in my very unpredictable country. However, when did yaradua come with this new idea of aggressive farming- I thought it was about aggressive education so that our pp know and learn from what's going on around them.

What critical effort is he making/ going to make to ensure that an industry attracts youths that are not interested in farming at all. It's ok if he lavishes the oil money with his greedy followers, but give the pp smthg to build on. Learn from CAP. Moderator, tell Yar to ask whoever is in charge of the project to learn from the success of others, review our own failure and be accountable to Yar at least- if he really has the interest of d pp at hand (those of us that are farmers or wish to be).

Long n short of my narrative is that we need a conducive environment, reckonable policies, deregulation of cos and money lending institutions wiv little or no interest at all, 2 name only a few

Yara' Adua is a dumb ass, so his idea will always mirror his brain. What makes him think that farming is where the unemployed should be pushed into. I didn't hear him calling the youths to become senators or ministers as that is exclusive in his brain. Farming is a noble and expensive career/business. It's no for unemployed youth as they can't even afford the crops to plant let alone the machinery, marketing. And bank loan in Nigeria is like a death sentence, you can never pay off unless your father is a member of PDP board of distrustees, so how can youths then starts farming even with notorious land use decree that give govt the ownership of all lands.

Inside wealthy nations, farms are ran by millionaires and billionaires and not for every Dick and Harry as a last resort.
He should lead by example with all the stolen money his brother left for him and the ones he stole himself doing nothing to start farming.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with what the president has said.  You'd be amazed what a GROUP of youths can achieve, even in terms of financing, as a well organized, professionally run agric company or consortium with a professional business plan.

Or you want YarAdua to also teach you how to package yourself?

We have thousands of companies across Nigeria started via the owner benefitting from some government-backed micro-credit scheme or SME funding drive etc. So things ARE possible, even without being ''connected''.

Oh, and I bet you not ONE of these moaners here has investigated A SINGLE ONE of the agricultural incentives mentioned with a view to harnessing them. Far easier to sit around doing nothing, knowing nothing, assuming the worst, and moaning.

Meanwhile, the sharp ones are this minute, combing every bit of info on what's happening and how to benefit. Tomorrow you'll see them in their Hummer and mansion and you'll accuse them of stealing from you.

Mschewwwwww.  Nonsense.

what are the incentives you have provided to aid the youths yar'ádua? talk is cheap eh?

He unashamedly dashed out his child to be the 4th wife of his 'elementary school mate"
why didn't he send her to plant groundnuts in Kano

Dont blame yar adua. It is hard been a president. what yar adua need to do is create an atmosphere for customer service position. This is where more than 5 million nigeria youth can find a job. It may not pay big but something to start on.

You see electricity is vital to customer service. I have several company that would be willing to outsource thier service to nigeria. If we do not steal thier money. We speak better english than india . Sometime, white people find it easy to understand us than india but they have been getting the customer service outsource job. if I know where we can have 24 hour electricity. I know how to bring some company to nigeria. marketing is big in america. lot of money. electricity is the only thing stopping us.

Most nigerian in market would rather bring the business to nigeria. even if you pay people N50,000 per month they would be happy. company to how much we have to pay them over here for the same service.  but electricity is bad in nigeria.

oh come folks, thats what we need. "Cash". . .forget the crop farming. he was only joking.

ROSSIKE:

There's absolutely nothing wrong with what the president has said. You'd be amazed what a GROUP of youths can achieve, even in terms of financing, as a well organized, professionally run agric company or consortium with a professional business plan.

Or you want YarAdua to also teach you how to package yourself?

We have thousands of companies across Nigeria started via the owner benefitting from some government-backed micro-credit scheme or SME funding drive etc. So things ARE possible, even without being ''connected''.

Oh, and I bet you not ONE of these moaners here has investigated A SINGLE ONE of the agricultural incentives mentioned with a view to harnessing them. Far easier to sit around doing nothing, knowing nothing, assuming the worst, and moaning.

Meanwhile, the sharp ones are this minute, combing every bit of info on what's happening and how to benefit. Tomorrow you'll see them in their Hummer and mansion and you'll accuse them of stealing from you.

Mschewwwwww. Nonsense.

I think you might be missing the source of agression or displeasure on this thread. I bet you would be hard pressed if asked to point out a post that postulates that a venture in agriculture is stupid or bad. It is obvious to many that diversifying the economy would be a big bonus and would be common sense. Just imagine the ammount of money spent on importing food products, Nigeria even imports rice in ridiculous quantities. We import everything and such things cost money and mean the country loses a lot of money through such avenues, hence no need to sing the benefits of agric or how self determination can be a defining factor in our personl successes. The issue is Yar Adua.

For crying out loud this guy has been the president and commander in chief of the federal republic of Nigeria for close to two years now, and we are going to take such award winning observations as achievements? Everyone keeps waiting for this guy to do something and I know some times it seems people just whine for the sake of it and to be honest a good percentage do. However what do we expect next? Do we next applaud Yar Adua when he comes out tomorrow and gives a press conference in which he advices everyone to eat in order to stay alive? Do we hand out awards for such little packages of insight like 'have a shower everyday to stay clean'? Sorry but i don't see such things as a sign of knowledge or discernment.

Although I am always a hopeful person, I stopped expecting any action from Yar Adua and have focused attention on Governors who are doing something and what I can do with the help of others to instigate development or bring change in whatever way I can. Such a stance beats feeling frustrated at Yar Adua and his antics and such would probably achieve more than whatever Yar Adua could possibly do (at the rate things are going) if more of use move beyond rhetoric and get involved in doing something about the situation.

we nigerians are very lazy, what is bad in going into farming, ic tht every nigerian wnt to wear tie, wasted generation!