The Africa Rice Advocacy Platform (ARAP), under the John Kufuor Foundation (JKF), is focused on achieving zero importation of rice on the continent, the Policy Adviser, JKF, Hon. Abraham Dwuma, has said.
Dwuma, who spoke in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital at the weekend, said ARAP had created a rice value chain to achieve this. He added that rice importation will end by 2020.
“Two years from now, Nigeria should have no business importing rice because I have travelled the length and breadth of the country and I know the potentials.
“Kebbi State alone can produce all the rice Nigeria needs; not to talk of Sokoto and Kwara. For, example, in Akwa Ibom State, they have one of the best lands for rice production.
“When we came to Nigeria, farmers were doing 1.5 tonnes per hectare; now they are doing six tonnes per hectare two times in a year. We believe that with this platform, we will get there.”
Dwuma explained that the Foundation was borne out of the desire of former Ghanaian President, John Kufuor, to ensure that African farmers earn a living from rice production.
“When Kufuor won the World Food Prize, he said he realised that African farmers need a voice, then, if they need a voice, we have to bring them together.
“So, there was a need to do what we call the advocacy platform in four chosen countries; Ghana, Burkina Faso, Tanzania and Nigeria,” he said.
The JKF policy adviser said through this platform, the Foundation was not only talking to the government, but to the farmers to improve their quality, quantity and their work.
Dwuma, however, noted that for the value chain to be sustainable, it should be supported by business modules.
“What we are doing now is that we are creating the rice value chain and for this value chain to be sustainable, we need to be supported by business modules at all levels of the cabin.
“We are creating what we call business modules. For instance, if someone is an input dealer, he will be able to bring the right input to farmers and the farmers are being educated to do it well,” he said.
ARAP Secretary-General, Abdulrauf Lawal, said the platform had made rice production easy in order to halt importation.
“It is a pity that we spend over a billion naira per day to import rice, which is N365 billion per year, which can be used to venture into other things like youth employment and improvement of social amenities,” he said.
Lawal, who is also the Deputy National Vice President of Nigeria Rice Advocacy Platform, however, noted that
Nigeria must employ 250,000 teachers yearly to address shortfall – TRCN
The Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) has said a total of 250,000 teachers must be employed annually in the country to address the shortfall of teachers in basic and secondary school levels.
This was even as it gave December 2019 as deadline it would stop non-professionally trained teachers from the teaching discipline in the country.
Registrar of the council, Prof. Josiah Ajiboye, while addressing newsmen in Abuja, reiterated that 250,000 teachers was needed annually to be able to address teachers’ deficit in the primary and post-primary schools.
“Some teachers are leaving the profession; some are retiring and are not being replaced. We need about 250,000 teachers annually because we have a shortage of teachers. The insurgency in the Northeast has made the situation critical,” he said.
While revealing that the country at the moment had over two million qualified and registered teachers in its public and private primary and post-primary schools, Ajiboye said TCRN had registered more than 500,000 qualified teachers since 2016 as part of efforts to eliminate quackery in the teaching profession.
“Within the period that I have been in the saddle, over 500,000 teachers have been registered within the period of two years, because before I came, they registered just over one million but about now, we have close to two million teachers that have been registered.”
He said teachers who do not have the basic qualification requirement for teaching, which according to him remains the Nigerian Certificate in Education (NCE), have till December 2019 to get the necessary qualification and come forward for registration by TRCN or be shown the way out of the profession.
Ajiboye explained that the National Council on Education which is the highest decision-making body on education has ratified the deadline at its meeting held in 2017 in Kano.
“The Council had taken a position a long time ago and it was reaffirmed at its Kano meeting in 2017 that anybody that is not qualified, not registered and licenced by TRCN by December 2019 would not be allowed in a classroom.
“The moratorium period was two years and we now have a year to go. By January 2020, we will begin to do enforcement and remove them from our classrooms,” he said.
The TRCN, he added would start the elimination of unregistered teachers from the profession in 2020 using six states as a pilot study.
The states are Nasarawa State for North Central, Ogun for South West, Ebonyi for South East, Cross River for South South, Jigawa for North West and Bauchi for North East.
“We have the list, we have the database of those who are qualified and those who are in school teaching but not qualified. It is going to be a continuous exercise. We will cascade to the rest of the country and route out those who are not qualified from the profession,” he said.