Prominent leaders in the Niger Delta region on Thursday in Abuja showered praises on the Minister of Agriculture, Chief Audu Ogbeh, and the Minister of State for Agriculture, Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, for their understanding of the agricultural terrain and moving the sector forward.
The leaders also praised the ministers for harnessing the good policies on the table, reducing dependency on food imports, boosting domestic food production, reviving rural economy and expanding export earnings.
The leaders, who met in the federal capital city, commended the ministers for their accomplishments in the area of agricultural development, particularly their support for genuine investors.
They also praised them for strengthening the various regulatory and inspection authorities, empowering farmers to produce for home consumption and for export, promoting innovation, profitability, transparency and investments.
They praised them for driving productivity and growth, raising the standard of living in the country, transforming abattoirs all over Nigeria and reviving ailing research institutions.
In a statement in Abuja by the Director of Communications of the Niger Delta Peoples Movement, Mrs. Ibifuro Tatua, the leaders commended the ministers for facilitating loans to farmers and egg production in the country, formulating agriculture rebirth policies, funding research institutes, starting the ‘Cattle Breeding Improvement Programme, influencing the average farmer, grooming the new generation of agro-industrialists and agropreneurs , capturing many vibrant Nigerian youth and supporting them in agricultural enterprises.
They praised the duo for the N40 billion Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP)
Specifically, the leaders applauded Lokpobiri, a former member of the Bayelsa State House of Assembly from 1999 to 2003, and speaker of the house from June 1999 to May 2001, for his passionate and altruistic concern for the less fortunate members of society, his honesty as well as his inclusive strategy, which they said opened a path to the unity of the people of the region despite the political differences.
