Fg’ll Develop Irrigation Facilities To Encourage Agriculture, Buhari Assures

T HEFederal Government, yesterday, said it would focus on the development of irrigation facilities so as to encourage more people to invest in agriculture.

President Muhammadu Buhari stated this at the State House, Abuja, during the sixth regular meeting with the Presidential Economic Advisory Council ( PEAC), led by Prof. Doyin Salami. Stressing the importance of agriculture, he said: “We need to go back to the land. Technology is doing away with petroleum, but we are lucky we have other resources; gas, vast arable land, which we are not using enough.”

The President was responding to the disclosure by Salami, in his presentation, that only two per cent of land under cultivation was irrigated, recommending that apart from government efforts, incentives were needed for private people to venture into the sector. On the security challenges, which PEAC said was having great repercussions on the economy, Buhari charged leadership at every level to go back to the basics, noting that a bottom- up approach was necessary, from wards to local councils, states and federal.