LIFE-ND establishes youths in agric advocacy platform in Abia

By Leonard Okachie

The Abia Project Coordinating Office of the Livelihood Improvement Family Enterprises  for Niger Delta (LIFE-ND) has established youths in agriculture advocacy platform in the state.

Some youth from across the state participated in the capacity building programme for the advocacy, which took place at the LIFE-ND secretariat in Umuahia.

The project’s Coordinator, Rural Institution, Youth and Gender, Dr Clement Uwem, said the platform was established to give the youths enough opportunities to identify their needs.

He said the platform would help to see how those needs could be put together and possibly produce a policy brief towards addressing those of them that hinder ease of doing agribusiness in the state.

Uwem said that it was part of the strategic framework by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in providing opportunities for youths.

He said that IFAD expected that there should also be serious engagements and adequate feedback between beneficiaries, other youths, who were in agriculture and stakeholders, to provide solutions.

He said that Abia was the third state to have the platform after Delta and Bayelsa, among the six participating states in the IFAD-funded LIFE-ND project.

According to Uwem, Cross River, Edo and Ondo will follow soon.

The LIFE-ND State Project Coordinator, Dr Uchenna Onyeizu, regretted that issues that affect the youths in society were not being taken as seriously as they should.

He said that the group would, therefore, be engaging the government and other stakeholders on a regular basis, to ensure that youth issues were mainstreamed in their decision-making processes.

Onyeizu also said that there were much more youths than other age categories in the country, but were not getting the needed attention.

He said: “Above 50 – 70 per cent of the decision-making processes across board, either as an individual in the family or government, should consider the youths for us to have a sane society.

“We are creating this platform so that at the end of the day it becomes the voice that probably the youths are lacking in Abia.”

A participant, Miss Ifeanyi Ndukwe of Pri Noha Farms, Ohafia, lauded the initiative.

Ndukwe said that the platform would provide opportunities for  youths to lend their voices on issues that affect them.

NAN reports that LIFE-ND is funded by IFAD, in collaboration with the Federal Government and Niger Delta Development Commission as well as the state government.

The project, which is in line with President Muhammadu Buhari’s vision for national food security, is meant for implementation in the nine Niger Delta states, but is currently operating in six.

(NAN)