The Management of Agricultural and Rural Management Training Institute (ARMTI) has lamented that the lingering fuel scarcity in the country was negatively affecting agricultural business across the nation.

The Acting Executive Director of the institute, Mr Anthony Njoku, who disclosed this Friday also said the situation has become a threat towards actualization of food security, noting that industrialists, manufacturers and business owners had lost billions of naira as a result of the fuel crisis. Speaking in an interview with newsmen during the disbursement of N1million seed fund to Arnoyo and Omomere-Oja communities in Kwara State as part of the ARMTI village Alive Development Initiative, Njoku said that fuel scarcity is seriously affecting agric business.

He said, "for example, there is a community, Fufu, they are noted for shear butter production. We had identified market for them. For the past three weeks they have not made any sales because the market we identified for them has no fuel to come and buy from them. It is also affecting industrialization". He said all the first benefiting seven communities of VADI now have N19.5million as loanable fund from their initial seed fund of N10million.

According to him, the VADI project had served as an experimental learning process for ARMTI and had impacted on the lives of the people in the participating communities in many ways.

He noted that with the quality of life and standard of living being improved substantially, VADI had demonstrated that if given greater capacity and support, the rural communities would do more to live well. "What we are doing in the VADI project is simple. We are demonstrating the simple fact that Nigeria has everything we need for effective diversification of the national economy through agribusiness by involving our rural stakeholders/actors in the different agricultural value chains where each community has comparative advantage.

The Acting Executive Director expressed hope that in no distant time, state governments and other stakeholders would motivate the ARMTI in VADI, by partnering with the institute.