General Overseer of the Living Faith Church International, Bishop David Oyedepo, has canvassed a paradigm shift from the pursuit of elusive white collar jobs to embracing of agriculture, if Nigeria’s quest of boosting employment opportunities for its citizenry would not be a mirage. Oyedepo, who spoke at the 20th International Conference and 40th Annual General Meeting of Nigerian Institution of Agricultural Engineers, (NIAE) held at Landmark University, Omu-Aran, Kwara State, said, aside agriculture, no vocation or institution could accommodate millions of Nigerian job seekers. He said: “Landmark University has a vision to restore agrarian revolution in Africa and to restore the dignity of African man.
We are endowed with fertile land but sadly we have over 400 million hungry graduates across the globe seeking for job opportunities that do not exist. “The cheapest way to be gainfully engaged is via agriculture. It can’t go into extinction because man must eat to live. There is no day that food will be irrelevant. It is, therefore, wise and safe now to tackle the impending day of poverty and hunger through mechanised farming.”
The event, with the theme: ‘Innovations and Technologies For Sustainable Agricultural Mechanisation and Livestock Transformation For Economic Growth’, drew participants from within and outside the nation. Keynote Speaker, Prof. Michael Ngadi, an international expert in Food Quality and Safety, noted that agric engineers, particularly of the modern century, have been playing key roles in bringing food to the table of man. While decrying the high rate of human population the world over put at about 7.7 billion, with a tendency to grow into 10 billion in few years’ time. Ngadi said unless the food capacity is boosted via agricultural mechanisation, man would suffer from famine and quality health conditions. Nigeria, he said, should take a cue from China which has one of the finest Gross Domestic Product (GDP), due to its innovations in the field of agricultural mechanisation, notwithstanding its humongous population.