We have no reason to be hungry  —  Gov Radda

Amid the current high prices of food items across the country, the Governor of Katsina State, Dikko Radda, declared on Tuesday that there is no reason for Nigerians to be hungry.

Radda stated this during a courtesy visit to Mohammed Ibrahim, the Executive Secretary of the National Agricultural Development Fund (NADF), who pointed out that food production is the key to unlocking other sectors of the economy and remains the backbone of development.

He also acknowledged the strategic importance of the NADF in catalyzing food production and employment generation, as the agricultural sector remains the largest employer of labor. Therefore, Kastina State has deemed it fit to partner with the agency to facilitate efforts made in the State’s agricultural and agribusiness development.

He said, “First, I wish you well and pray for this agency to be one of the leading agencies in the country. I also seek partnership, relationship and collaboration with the subnational, especially Katsina State, in transforming agriculture.

As we are all aware, we don’t need to say it over and over, but 90 percent of my population in Katsina State is involved in agriculture and the agricultural value chain. Even our Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises, MSMEs, in Katsina, 90 percent or more of them are involved in agricultural enterprises, from production to processing to being on the table. So there is nothing we can do to support our people more than to support them in agricultural enterprise.

“All these things we are doing to support our farmers, to revolutionize our agriculture.

“We should be self-sufficient in food production. We have no reason why we should be hungry. We have no reason why we should be poor. If we are able to harvest all the potential that we have, we will have a great nation with great people who can move the nation forward.

“We are about, in the next two weeks, to commission agricultural mechanization centers in the state and all the 34 local governments. We bought over 400 tractors, combined harvesters, and over 1,000 planters, and the tractors came with their arrows, plows, trailers, and ridges so that we could reduce them.

We can collaborate with the National Agricultural Development Fund, and we will do many things to support our farmers.”

Meanwhile, he disclosed that in 2024, over N21 billion was spent on over 400,000 bags of fertilizer for farmers at all polling units, a baseline survey for all the farmers in Katsina State, the creation of an Agricultural Development Programme Unit, and the Irrigation Authority.

Speaking on the sidelines of the visit, Governor Radda expressed optimism that the Sabke Dam, when completed, will irrigate over 1,200 hectares of land, boosting food production with all-year farming, creating jobs, and reducing hunger in the land.

The Sabke Dam in Katsina State, one of the pilot dams that we have selected, to see how it can be improved, the facilities of irrigation can be advanced, and the hectares provided in that facility can be cultivated, and all the irrigation equipment should be supplied to the farmers, to serve as a pilot project under the Renewable Infrastructure Funds, and this is going to be scaled up to other projects in the country, but they have selected that dam that was constructed over 20 years, which was underutilized, or not utilized at all, and the kind of investment the federal government has made in those facilities, it is quite very huge, and I think this is done in partnership with the Nigerian National Agricultural Development Fund, and other agencies concerned in collaboration with the sub-nationals”, he added.