The Presidential Amnesty Programm, PAP, and the Niger Delta River Basin Development Authority, NDRBDA, have agreed to partner on a food security project aimed at boosting massive agricultural activities to tackle food scarcity in the region.
The food security project was initiated by NDRBDA.
The two federal agencies reached the understanding when the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of the NDRBDA, Prince Ebitimi Amgbare, visited the PAP Administrator, Dr Dennis Otuaro, in his office in Abuja on Monday.
Speaking during the visit, Otuaro assured Amgbare of the PAP’s readiness to support the project titled, ‘Food Security is the Real Security’, saying that the Niger Delta was endowed with a fertile soil and an attractive farming climate for sustainable food production and entrepreneurship in the region.
Otuaro’s comments were contained in a press release signed by his Special Assistant on Media, Mr Igoniko Oduma on Tuesday.
He noted that the NDRBDA initiative would complement the Programme’s focus on closing the gap of human capital development and fostering the sustainable peace, stability and security of the region and indeed the country in general.
He said, “This food project is laudable, and it will complement our mandate to foster sustainable security, stability and peace of the Niger Delta while bridging the human capital development gap and empowerment in the region.
“As a Programme, we have several vocational programmes, including agricultural interventions and entrepreneurship. And we have done a lot, from our records. We will collaborate with you as the pioneer interventionist agency for the development of the Niger Delta. We won’t work at cross-purposes.
“We are going to make the President and our people proud. This office will do its own part. What we are doing is to sustain the peace and security in the region. That is what Mr President wants. He wants us to work together as citizens from the Niger Delta to ensure that government’s assets are protected, and oil production marginally increased for the wellbeing of the country.
Earlier in his remarks, the MD/CEO of NDRBDA, Amgbare, said there was need to create wealth in the region and the society in general through effective inter-agency collaboration on agriculture and food production toward resolving food problem.
Amgbare said his leadership had established a structure at the agency to drive the food security project to achieve set goals, adding that a partnership with the PAP was imperative to push the initiative through for the benefit of the Niger Delta people.
While also congratulating Otuaro on his appointment, he said, “We are promoting an agenda that we have titled, ‘Food Security is the Real Security’. And we have come today to seek collaboration. We have come to ask that you partner with us because to solve the problem of the region, is food security. We have the structure already in place.
“As a Basin Authority, we have the structure to solve this food problem in our territory and even in the land. We have come to seek your collaboration to say let us work together, let us partner under the leadership of President Bola Tinubu. We can do a lot if we come together to partner to ensure that there is food security in our region.”