Kwara State Governor, Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed has urged the Federal Government to urgently formulate special financial policy that supports development of agric business in the country. If the potentials in the sector are well-harnessed, it could generate 25 million jobs in the next five years and improve the nation’s foreign earnings, Ahmed observed.

“Apart from reviving the comatose industries in the North, transforming the lives of rural dwellers, reducing youth restiveness, an agro-based based economy has the inherent potential to improve the country’s foreign earnings for the much needed infrastructure development,” he said.

He stated this in his contribution at an Aid and Development Roundtable in Washington, DC, on Wednesday according to a statement by his Chief Press Secretary, Alhaji Abdulwahab Oba. He emphasized that an agribusiness economy is being constrained largely by an unfavourable financial policy that does not take cognisance of gestation periods of agricultural produce.

Ahmed, who called on Northern Governors to collaborate with the Federal Government to come up with the right policy to drive agriculture in the country urged the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and other international aid agencies to quickly intervene in the areas of irrigation, agriculture inputs and manpower development.