*Community To Benefit Multi-Billion Agro Project Investment
By Emmanuel Uffot
An agro- allied project involving entire agric value- chain has been proposed for Ikot Nsung Ikono in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom state capital.
The project is to impact sustainable agricultural practice with a view to boosting increased crop production and meet a food adequacy program ideal for the populace.
Making the disclosure recently, core investor in the project, Lady Idara Enyong said the initiative which would incorporate vast swathe of cultivatable land will however, engage modern farming techniques and applications to deliver on optimal and critical crop yield and staples production. She disclosed more than N7.3 bn as being earmarked for the project funding.
Speaking from the background of a determined and set commitment to ensuring life is made more abundant and meaningful for the collective good, the humanitarian and charity donor hinted that the more than 30 hectare project initiative signposts of her readiness to leverage intensive investments in the agricultural sector to bolster health and meet the nutritional needs of the state residents, especially those of the aged and very vulnerable persons.
Stressing her concern to help improve on human welfare and happiness with a view to saving lives, alleviating mass suffering and combating the twin evil of hunger and poverty, the head and CEO of Idara Medical Outreach and Humanitarian Aid (IMOHA) said: “present food challenges and shortages that confronts the nation on a very scary scale poses a serious social and survival threat to everyone . These calls for urgent and serious remedial attention from everyone.”
Commending Governor Umo Eno on what she described as “his proactive action to combat hunger and food insecurity through the laudable introduction of pro- farming policies,” she said the monthly one day farming holiday for civil servants is a clincher to boosting crop and good production.”
The United States based healthcare worker also reasoned that, “while health and nutrition go together, only very serious and intensive investments in agriculture can adequately guarantee the needed reliefs of ensuring the wellness and well being of the people.”
Speaking further, Enyong argued, “a healthy society can only achieve more growth and increasing levels of higher development through the high productivity output of her working class operating within a health giving and wealth creating economy like all developed nations including USA, UK and Canada.”.
Urging for speedy and concentrated efforts at boosting increased food production which will in the long run, safeguard the continued wellness of the populace, Enyong said her veering from health to investments in agriculture was a matter of selflessness inspired by a deep passion to save and rescue society from the brinks of starvation and consumptive poverty.
Defending that intensive and sustainable agricultural programmes as she is proposing can only serve as a ready and appropriate mechanism toward steming the rise of hunger and growing spread of food insecurity affecting millions of the state population, she has called for stronger collaborations and very enabling partnerships with state governments, interested organizations and relief giving agencies to mutually deploy available funding and machinery to meeting and improving agricultural and food outputs across the state.
