Prioritize development of Local Farm Products—Group urges FG

From; Femi Oyelola, Kaduna

A group under the auspices of Northern Youth Groups (NYG,) in collaboration with concerned Civil Society Organizations (CSOs,) has called on the federal government to prioritize the production of local farm produce
This was contained in a communiqué issued yesterday, at the end of a meeting of Northern Youth Groups and CSOs, aimed at providing a solution to the economic hardship and insecurity in the country.
The communiqué was signed by Isa Abubakar, President, Northern Youth Council, Aliyu Muhammed, Publicity Secretary Arewa Youth Assembly, Yahaya Salisu, National Coordinator Northern Anti-Corruption Ambassadors, Simon Terms Coordinator, Coalition of National Ethnicities Youth Leaders of Nigeria, and Dr Felix Idaho, National President, Democratic Defence Initiative who was represented by Hon Desmond Minakaro.
The Communique stated that the objective of the meeting was to harp on the need to present a position paper to the federal government, providing solutions to the highlighted issues affecting the country.
The gathering applauded the efforts of security agencies in combating all forms of insecurity and urged them to maintain the tempo while calling on the Executive and Legislative arm of Government to continue giving them the required support.
The group suggested the setting up of regional or zonal security outfits rather, to avoid a clash of interest between the state and federal police and also the abuse of the system by some politicians.
The Group further explained that such security outfits will be similar to the several vigilante groups being used to fight crime in conjunction with another security outfit, but this time it will have more powers and weapons have been constitutionally empowered. the group believe that every zone has its own peculiar or similar security challenges that can effectively be handled by that zonal security outfit to check state border crimes.

The group aligned the FGN position not to import food but rather empower the local farmers with all the needed farm inputs to produce food requirements and even export some.

They also frowned at the practice of using middlemen to drive the process, they therefore suggested the use of traditional institutions to reach the farmers directly and to establish monitoring policies that will help safeguard the process.