The Special Assistant to the President on Agriculture, Hon. Abiodun N. Yunusa, has said President Bola Tinubu will soon launch an agricultural initiative known as Green Money Project meant to create five million jobs for the youths through mechanised agriculture, agro allied business with it’s value chains.
He disclosed this in a chat with newsmen Sunday in Abuja, adding that the president wants to make the youths the drivers of agriculture in the country.
”Mr. President is determined to make agriculture attractive to the teaming population of our youths, both young men and women, through the Green Money Project, address unemployment by creating new jobs, boost food security, he said.
He stated that, “Green Money Project is an intervention initiative that creates and adopts agriculture as a major tool for attracting, sensitising, empowering and activating innate business potential in youths of Nigeria for value and wealth creation.”
According to him, the project will be launched in the six geopolitical zones in the country, with emphasis that each zone focuses on producing crops peculiar to it’s land and ecosystem.
One of the highlights of the project, he said, is to address the inhibitive challenges that make agriculture unattractive to the younger generation.
”We are poised to address the issues of limited access to land, insecurity, poor or lack of infrastructure, funding, limited access to information, access to market, as well as the wrong perception of agriculture.,” the SSA said.
Yinusa who said the president is concerned that 33.3 percent out of the 70 percent of Nigeria’s population which is youths, is unemployed.
He said Nigeria is blessed with vast land resources which is grossly under utilised: “Nigeria has over 85 million hectres of arable land and only 35 percent is presently being cultivated. What are we doing with the remaining 65 percent? Nothing.
”That is why the Tinubu administration is poised to revolutionise and reposition land and agricultural resources in order to ensure that the sector competes favourably with oil in terms of revenue generation to the national economy and development,” he said.
