The drudgery and suffering involved in farming in Karu Local Government, Nasarawa State may soon be a thing of the past as the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI) is set to deploy its locally developed modern equipment and machines to revamp farming within its rural areas.
As part of the new collaboration and partnership between the Agency and karu local Government, NASENI will train farmers on how to use the farming equipment and machines to increase their productivity while the youths in the area also will be given new skills by the Agency to create jobs and wealth rather than look for employment that do not exist or remain on the streets.
The Executive Vice Chairman of NASENI, Engr. Prof. Mohammed Sani Haruna disclosed this at the weekend in Abuja when the Chairman of Karu Local Government, Nasarawa state, Hon. Akala Samuel Gajere and members of Council visited NASENI Headquarters. Prof. Haruna affirmed that the only sustainable way to alleviate the suffering of people in rural areas was to give the people new tools which enhance their productivity thereby bringing improvement to their earnings or income. Such tools, he said, are made available only through innovation, science, engineering and technology.
The Chairman of Karu Local Government during the visit to the Agency sought areas of partnership and collaboration with NASENI while explaining that Nigeria farmers in Karu Local Government deserved relief from suffering associated with old ways of use of cutlass and hoes and other excessive exertion of energies in the process of farming.
Some of NASENI’s locally made Agricultural Tools and Equipment for deployment in Agriculture include Hand-held Harvester/Weeder which is a petrol powered multi-purpose equipment designed to uproot weeds between rows in farm, fields and gardens. Also for harvesting of rice, wheat, maize, millet and guinea corn stalks, NASENI has developed the Magami Multi-Grain Thresher, a post-harvest processing machine for separating grains from harvested dry plants. The Cassava Grater, Hand-held water pump, Manual Rotary Drilling Rig for boreholes were all developed by NASENI and also targeted to intervene in Agriculture in the rural areas.
According to NASENI’S Chief Executive, the Agency would train unemployed youths of Karu Local Government in skill acquisition through waste to wealth facility that is available in one of NASENI development institutes. “The intention is to get the youths out of the streets. NASENI will teach the youths and women on new skills so they could meet their livelihood thereby reducing the tendency to go into crime”, said NASENI Executive Vice Chairman.
Earlier, Gajere had explained that Karu Local Government, because of its proximity to Federal Capital Territory, is densely populated and therefore faced so many challenges with security, power supply, overstretched facilities, women and youth unemployment, poor teaching tools and unqualified teachers in most of the public schools. Other problems include transportation, lack of basic access roads and data processing for internal revenue generation including tax collection.
He noted that the visit to NASENI was to seek areas of collaboration and partnership so that the Agency and Local Government could work together to alleviate the suffering of Karu communities and also improve their socio-economic condition. Gajere said the Local Government wanted NASENI’S intervention in education, especially because most of the schools in Karu were private schools and also quite expensive. He disclosed that the teachers in the public schools were not qualified and the schools facilities were in bad state, although, he said the Local Government was already handling the issue of teachers’ salary and physical structures.
Meanwhile, NASENI has donated Seven (7) primary science kits to Karu Local Government for distribution to selected primary schools within the area. The teachers who will handle the science kits are to be trained free of charge by NASENI resource persons.
SIGNED:
Olusegun Ayeoyenikan
Deputy Director, Information.