Nigerian federal government
has made it mandatory for under graduate students of the Federal
Universities of Agriculture, to own farms of their own before they can
graduate from the schools.
It was a clause was issued
last night by Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu
Ogbeh, when the Governing Councils of the universities of agriculture
paid him a courtesy visit.
Ogbeh said under the new dispensation, every undergraduate must now own a farm on campus from 200 level.
The
minister said graduation for the students of the universities of
agriculture would be based 60 per cent on practice and 40 per cent
theory.
“Every undergraduate must- and I repeat- must own a farm on
campus from 200 level. We are training high level young farmers who,
even before graduating, should have started earning a living. We should
be training graduates who should be going straight into production, with
credit support from their alma-mata, produce chicken, eggs, goats,
milk, set up meat laboratories, bake bread and above all produce and
sell large quantities of high quality hybrid seeds,” Ogbeh said.
He
said farmers were in desperate need of these services and more, adding
the institutions would make huge profits from innovative agricultural
practice.
Ogbeh described the return of the three universities of
agriculture to ministry as a rational, just and timely action,
necessitated by the new economic realities to ensure that our
institutions are better focused and more efficiently and economically
managed.
“The three federal universities of agriculture,” he
noted, “were established to advance the cause of agricultural
transformation and modernisation in Nigeria for the development of core
competencies in agricultural education, research and training, amongst
others.
It is, therefore, expected that the admission policy of
these universities will largely be reflective of this overarching goal.
Our submission is that, in the long run, the universities will be better
served if they focus on their core areas of business rather than on the
subsidiaries.”
He expressed the consciousness of government on
the fears and anxieties of teachers and the students already enrolled
for the subsidiary social sciences programmes aside from core
agricultural coursework.
Accordingly, he said: “We will not be cancelling them immediately. The task before you is to phase them out gradually.”
He,
however, called on the institutions not to overlook the opportunities
to earn huge revenues from agricultural research, seed and seedling
development, extension work, soil mapping and even production of food on
campus.
“You have huge parcels of land averaging 10,000 ha
each. I enjoin you to put them to use. Raise plantations as it is done
in Abeokuta and Umudike already. Scale- up the plantations over time and
earn income. Be the food basket of your respective host communities.”
He
disclosed that Ministry of Agriculture had already set in motion a
machinery to remodel the three universities into centres of excellence
of global reckoning by ensuring that the institutional structures
already enshrined in the Federal Universities of Agriculture Act cap F22
CFN 2010 for their effective management are put in place without delay.
from thisdaylive