Nigerian Govt approves employment of 30,000 extension service workers

The Nigerian Government is to engage 30,000 graduates to serve as agriculture extension workers who will provide strategic support to farmers across the country.

It also announced on Monday that it had empowered 20 young Nigerian farmers with an initial take off grant of N30m, saying the fund was provided through the Bank of Agriculture.

The Executive Secretary, National Agricultural Land Development Authority, Paul Ikonne, said  that the graduates would be trained in agriculture extension services including the collection of soil samples and how to conduct soil tests.

Mr Ikonne was speaking at a media chat in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital.

He said ”the graduates, expected to have backgrounds in agriculture and Sciences would be engaged under the National Young Farmers Scheme and trained for two weeks for free across the country.

“President Muhammadu Buhari had given the approval to engage over 30,000 graduates who would be engaged under the National Young Farmers Scheme…They will be trained intensively for two weeks on soil sample collection and soil tests, as well as other agriculture extension services,” he stated.

Soil test kits
Mr Ikonne said that the initiative was basically for graduates of agriculture and other related science courses, as participants would be given the required soil test kits and soil collection sample kits.

He also said that the participants would be shortlisted by the participating states and the training would be done in batches to enable Covid-19 protocol observance.

The NALDA helmsman said his agency would subsidise the amount to be paid by farmers for the service to be rendered by the extension workers, as only N500 would be required for any soil sample collected for testing.

On the importance of extension workers to the sector, he said Agricultural sector has suffered over the years due to absence of extension workers.

Ikonne said, “We cannot achieve food security without understanding our soil, without getting our farmers to know what the soil requires.

“So what the soil doctors will be doing is that they will go to every farmland to conduct soil tests first before any farming season to know what nutrient the various soils require and what type of fertiliser the crops will need.”

Ikonne said added that President Buhari had mandated that NALDA to ensure that soils in the country begin to yield maximum output and farmers begin to get their returns on investment.

This came as the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Sabo Nanono, said the N30m grant to 20 young farmers would serve as seed capital for the beneficiaries to establish smallholder agribusinesses.

Mercy Chukwudiebere