Teku Farms on Saturday commenced free training of 150 youth on horticulture and fish farming business in Kaduna, in a bid to address insecurity through reduction of youth unemployment and improving food security.
The four-week intensive training in Kaduna, include various aspects of horticulture such as flowing plants, economic trees, landscaping, seedling, fumigation, orchard designation and maintenance, while fish farming training includes fish hybrid and fish pond maintenance among others.
Addressing the training, founder of the Teku International Farms and Agro Allied Services Limited, Kaduna, Alhaji Ibrahim Salisu said the free training was his own little way of giving back to the society and helping to solve challenges of youth restiveness and insecurity particularly in Kaduna state, while supporting federal and state governments’ efforts toward reducing unemployment in the society.
According to him, the program is a four-week intensive training to educate, enlighten and help the youth fight poverty through creativity.
He stated that the training would also help to create more awareness on the importance of horticulture business, to enable Nigerian graduates become self employed through agriculture businesses.
Speaking further, Alhaji Salisu said there were teeming number of unemployed graduates roaming the streets, which gives him the reason to motivate them through training, to enable them stand up and fight poverty and unemployment that has impacted most on security challenges in the country
“Insecurity is becoming a big threat to Nigeria as most people who carry out this daredevil activities are youth. So, I felt the best way to contribute to salvage the situation is to bring the youth on board, train them on horticulture and fish farming business. We need only 150 graduates but we have over 1,000 people that applied for the training, that is really shocking.
“We published the form for application online and free for Kaduna state youth, but surprisingly youth from other neigbouring states came to Kaduna for the one month training. I create this program to support my country in reducing the number of unemployed graduates and helping them become entrepreneurs and other specialist in fish farming.
“I believed Kaduna state government would be happy with my initiative and am hoping to start training widows and destitute, so that they can also become self reliant. Last year we gave out over 500 different species of tress to Kaduna state government, to fight desertification and climate change. We also donated hundreds of trees to both churches and mosques and public schools, to reduce global warming.”
The guest lecturer and Head of Department of Horticulture and Landscape Technology, Federal College of Forestry Mechanization, Afaka, Kaduna state, Dr Akintunde Sodimu urged the youth to make the best use of the opportunity, noting that there are so many things they could lay their hands on to do profitably, which does not require large capital investment.
A participant, Ms Precious Matthew, said that she was at the program because of her passion for agriculture. Precious, who trained as architect, said she had been involved in fish farming previously but decided to venture into horticulture at the training.
“I hope to learn more about horticulture since this is my first time on the business,” she said.
