Abuja MDGs set up FCT yam forum committee

December 14, 2013

The Office of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) has set up a forum for yam development to encourage the territory’s farmers in boosting agriculture in the nation’s capital.

The focal person of the FCT MDGs Abubaker Sani Pai, who said this at the inauguration of the FCT yam development forum in Gwagwalada area of the territory, said that the FCT MDGs would take advantage of the forum in exposing Abuja yam farmers to increase yam production in the territory.

“It is really a forum that we have been looking forward to, since government cannot provide everything. There are interventions coming from different international donors; that is why when we had this support from this organisation, we took it wholeheartedly so that.....

our farmers can boost agricultural production particularly the yam,” Mr. Pai said.

“In the past, when they had a meeting in Ghana, they never knew that FCT was also producing yam and when we made a presentation, they knew of us. This is good to expose our farmers so that the quantity and quality of yam being produced in the country will increase,” he added.

Dr. Norbert Maroyal, who is the manager of yam improvement for income and food security in West Africa, International Institute for Tropical Agriculture, said, “This inauguration is a very strong step for us in the project. We are now in the third year of a five-year project and it shows, on the ground, the result you have. We have gone through, did line survey to know the level of production, the level of productivity in the yam, a lot of area, which includes the FCT.”

Inaugurating the twelve man executive committee of the forum, the chairman of Gwagwalada area council, Abubakar Jubril Giri, represented by the council secretary, Usman Yahaya, said such committee at the council level will also be inaugurated to train yam farmers.

“Those that will be trained from Gwagwalada area council, our intention is that when they finish, we will organise a forum where they will also train framers in the council so others can also benefit from this initiative,” Yahaya said.

The twelve-man executive committee of the forum was drawn from the six area councils of the FCT.