By Ezra Musa
The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr Mohammad Abubakar, on Monday launched the North West regional office of Agricultural and Rural Management Training Institute (ARMTI) in Kaduna.
Abubakar at the launch said that this was part of the Federal Government’s agricultural transformation agenda to provide requisite training for rural farmers in order to boost food production.
He said the Institute would help the ministry in achieving its mandate to ensure food security in crops, livestock, and fisheries.
According to him, the ministry has received most of it budgetary allocation, interventions to ensure that Nigeria can produce enough crops to feed the nation.
He added that the institute would bring the knowledge to rural farmers who are contributing to the 70 percent of food production in the country.
He assured that government would replicate the training institute across the 36 states of the federation.
Mr Olufemi Oladunni, the Executive Director, ARMTI, has appealed for more funding to enable the agriculture training institute carryout its objectives effectively.
According to him, the budgetary provision released for one entity is being used to run four campuses and sites which is not good enough.
He, however appreciated the Federal Government for the supports, adding that more funding would enable the institute to do more and ensure the development of the Nigeria’s agricultural sector through capacity building.
“The impact of our rural development initiative alone has been transforming communities all over the nation but our major limitation is funding.
“I wish to state that ARMTI requires more funding so that it can do more.
“It is due to the resilience and resourcefulness deployed that the budgetary provision released for one entity is being used to run four campuses and sites.
“And we are launching another one today,” he said.
Oladunni explained that the institute pursued and obtained approval to expand out frontiers which led to the opening of regional training centres in all the geo-political zones in the country.
He added that this landmark was achieved within the last one year.
“I am glad that we are launching the North West region today because two are already up and running.”
“ARMTI’s drive to ensure the development of the Nigeria agricultural sector led to seeking ways to spread our impacts farther and widen.
“This led to putting up an additional component in our Abuja regional training and conferencing facility.
“It’s a 27 room hostel facility which was inaugurated and commissioned by the Minister in 2022, ” he added
The Executive Director further explained that these regional training centres were designed to deliver training programmes for trainers within each geo-political zone as well as develop methodologies and learning materials for them.
He noted that the centres would also help state governments through its ministries of agriculture and ADPs to achieve more in economic development through agriculture.
In his goodwill message, Dr Timkat, Kaduna State Coordinator of the ministry, commended government for the decentralisation of the insitute to address peculiarities in value chain of each zone.(NAN)