The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) as well as the Agricultural and Rural Management Training Institute (ARMTI), Ilorin, have partnered towards addressing food insecurity in the country.

Both organisations have therefore commenced training for over 150 youths below the age of 35 on how to improve food production and bring a new lease of life to the people of the country.

Speaking in Ilorin yesterday, the ARMTI Executive Director, Dr. Olufemi Oladunni, said that the training programme aimed to empower the beneficiaries drawn from six geopolitical zones of the country to be financially independent and make them employers of labour.

The ARMTI boss, who also said that the training programme would help take care of the nation’s food and nutritional security, added that large production of fish and vegetable would improve nutrition among people.

He also expressed the optimism that the beneficiaries would make their lives easier with the enterprise, with the resultant financial breakthrough, saying that almost every home in the country consumes a variety of vegetable and fish everyday.

Also speaking, the Technical Assistant to the Executive Director, Kingsley Olurinde, said that the participants would be empowered after the training programme to ensure easy take off.

“The project is a collaborative one between ECOWAS and ARMTI and the major objective is to create jobs for the unemployed youths.

“This workshop is taking care of 150 participants as the ECOWAS has provided funds while ARMTI is contributing every other dimension to make sure that the beneficiaries are empowered, adequately skilled in fish production, integrated with market gardening.

“We hope that at the end of the workshop, they will not be job seekers again, but employers of labour.

“ECOWAS has also provided funds to empower them to some extent to ease their take office. After their opening, we hope to support them the more and move forward to become big stakeholders in the fish and vegetable industry,” he said.

The institute also explained the reason behind the choice of vegetable and fish farming.

“The food and nutrition security of the nation is essential. It’s like using a stone to kill two birds. So, we will be creating jobs for the youth and we want them to help solve an existing problem which is food and nutrition security in the nation.

“So, imagine 150 people producing fish and vegetables, turning the output into the nation’s markets, that’s a whole lot and food security is being guaranteed”, he said.