Hon. Lawrence Ayeni, the lawmaker representing Atakumosa East and Ilesa East/West of Osun State at the Federal House of Representative, on Friday, urged Nigerians to embrace agriculture, especially due to the economic hardship that has continued to trail the COVID-19 outbreak.

Ayeni gave the charge during a three day skill acquisition and entrepreneurship training he facilitated for his constituents, adding that engaging in agribusiness is rewarding.

“Having just witnessed various waves of the global pandemic with its attendant loss of jobs and the shut down of many small and medium scale businesses, leading to economic crunch and drop in income of Nigerians, this is the right time to return to agriculture.” he said

Speaking on the training programme titled 'Capacity Building Of Graduates Youths In Agribusiness In Atakumosa East/West and Ilesa East/West Federal Constituency, Osun State' Ayeni added that the core motive behind the empowerment is to ensure that his constituents enjoy dividends of Democracy.

"There is no motive other than the fact that I am representing my Constituency, and the constituents must benefit from the representation.

"Empowerment is part of my plan for my people. So, I am focused on doing the projects that will last and make my people self-reliant. We are not for those empowerments that gets quenched within a short period of time.

"Hence, we decided to go into Agro-allied. It's a lucrative endeavour. Money will automatically be coming for them.

"By the grace of God, in the next three months, they will see the outcome of this empowerment. There is an existing market for this business and by Easter festive period, when this business matures, we would be buying the product back from them as the first encouragement gesture," he said.

Ayeni also said, certain monitoring measures have been put in place to make sure the empowerment don't go down the drain.

He consequently urged the beneficiaries of the empowerment materials to put them into profitable use to ensure his mandate of fulfilling the Federal Government’s desire to make the Constituency economically viable and productive is actualized.

He enjoined the beneficiaries to exercise prudence in financial management on day to day operations in their respective enterprises, adding that the constituency will continue to partner with the empowered beneficiaries through constant and timely inspection to supervise, mentor and counsel them accordingly.

Also, the center coordinator of BioResources Development Centre, Ilesa, Dr. Adebanjo Otitoju said agribusiness empowerments are essential so as to eradicate poverty and unemployment in the country.

"There have been a great problem of unemployment in the country. After graduation from tertiary institutions, graduates have hard times finding white collar jobs, because these jobs are not always there again.

"Like President of Africa Development Bank, Dr. Adesina said that in coming decades millionaires and trillionaires will come from agriculture, so in this part of the world, we need to gainfully engage the graduates youths so they can be fully engaged," he said.

Responding on behalf of the beneficiaries in their separate addresses, Mr Olanrewaju Adekunle from Atakumosa East and Mr Damola Olamilekan from Ilesa West, thanked the Hon. Ayeni for his good heart towards his constituents and his zeal for human capacity building, sustainable development and empowerment.

Mr Olamilekan enthusiastically declared that Hon. Ayeni is a blessing to Osun State and even Nigeria as a whole.

He declared his loyalty and support for the legislator’s political future endeavours and wished Hon Ayeni long life in good health and elevation in his future endeavours.

On his own part, Mr Ogunlumade said, the lawmaker has done greatly in the area of agriculture, saying he has always supported farmers and also supported the education of Ijesha people as well.

No fever than 60 people, comprising farmers, graduates and other unemployed people were trained on poultry farming.

The beneficiaries, were selected across the lawmaker's constituency and they will be supported by the lawmaker to establish their own businesses, in order to be self-reliant.

Hon. Ayeni who had recently distributed bags of Fertilizer, sprayers and other Agricultural materials to farmers in his Constituency, also distributed poultry birds, feeds and cash to the 60 beneficiaries.
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