Umar Faruq Oba Adelodun, chief executive officer and co-founder, Heart and Capital Nigeria Ltd, has disclosed that the’ Eterno Project’, recently launched by the firm, will create over 100 direct and 500 indirect agro-based jobs.
Adelodun, who disclosed this at a conference, revealed that the project will generate billions of naira for investors and other stakeholders within the next 20 years.
He says that the project is aimed at ensuring food security in the country and creating more windows of opportunities for Nigerians to discover sustainable business acumen towards a reliable future.
“Since 2017, we have cultivated over a thousand acres of farmland and trained over 8,000 youths across the country on agribusiness, and now we have scaled from being just a crop focused company into consulting for livestock farms and food processing facilities,” he said.
“It will be noteworthy to also state here that our investment platform -Asset-Mart gives 15% ROI for all investors but more importantly created over 100 direct and indirect jobs,” he further said.
He stated that to contribute to the United Nations action goal, the firm has launched the Eterno Project.
Adelodun assured that Heart and Capital is committed to boosting agriculture and encourages more youths to participate in agriculture.
Panelists at the event blamed Nigeria’s woes on mono-economy and over-reliance on oil, failure to harness human capital development among others.
They posited that Nigeria has a positive environment but not currently utilise rightly as farming processes are not carried out in ways to protect the ecosystem.
They, however, suggested improved effort and more funds to farmers to boost food production and address poverty/hunger and as well ensure food security for the country.
In his submission, Ahmed Kastina Muhammed, the Kwara State permanent secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, noted that Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq led administration is doing everything possible to profitably engage youths in innovative and improved agricultural practices beyond mere subsistence farming as well as bring up the small scale farmers to commercial level.
“A demonstration of this is evident in the facelift currently taking place at the Integrated Youth Farm Centre Malete and the rehabilitation of Duku Lade Irrigation Scheme to ensure all year round farming among others,” he said.
Mohammed had while observing that the world was currently facing multiple problems of food insecurity, global warming and low pricing of crude oil, of which Nigeria is not left out, recommended that “In order to unravel these issues, Nigeria as a country needs to ardently embrace agriculture as an alternative source of income as opposed to over-reliance on crude oil.”
SIKIRAT SHEHU, Ilorin
