WEARING OUR THINKING CAP: So many years back there were rural urban migration that brought people like my late father to Lagos. Though he rose from point of insignificance to modest prominence, the migration of many of them paid off for them through dint of hard work. Peasant farming also suffered and it impacted somehow on food supplies. Today the major cities of Nigeria are saturated. Just like after heavy down pour, the alluvial deposits of rural- urban migration are noticeable in terms of social vices like high crime rate, prostitution, housing problems, road congestions and indeed other anti social issues. Today, some people are returning to the rural communities due to the difficult situation of surviving in major cities. We can tap into this opportunity and indeed encourage more to settle in other smaller towns. It involves dynamism and collaboration on the part of the government at all tiers with the federal government first taking the initiative. I am optimistic that with the moribund PHCN out of the way, electricity will certainly become stable. We should quickly add other composite and complementary attributes like employment, food production and cottage industries. How do we do this? The federal government should initiate a program through the ministries of work and agriculture where prospective self employment individuals will be trained through a crash program in different farming projects such as fish farming, animal husbandry, cash crops, poultry and so on. The federal government will thereafter broker a deal with state governments to offer farm sites across local governments for people to start small scale farming in their areas of interest. The government shall therefore package a fund not to be given directly to the beneficiaries but should instead be directly used to set up the project a volunteer shows interest in. They must be made to sign a bond that will make it punishable if direct sabotage is discovered on the part of any beneficiaries. Those who sustain it shall be encouraged by further incentive to expand. The ministries involved should now employ more hands who are professionals in different branches of knowledge who will be attached to a group of beneficiaries and they will be visiting on a regular basis to assist the farmers in areas of difficulties and challenges. If these are done we can extrapolate on the consequences to include: 1. employment generation 2. Food production boosting 3. Urban decongestion 4. Sustainable economic growth 5. Possibility of diversification from oil dominated income 6. More export opportunities I have a blue print better than the way I have adumbrated above but it is not for free o, (lol) federal ministries of work and whichever one is relevant for employment, is it called labor and productivity?
Posted on: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 03:31:12 +0000
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