Youths urged to embrace farming

CHAIRMAN, Poultry Farmers Association, Anambra State, Ugochukwu Okpalaeke has called on youths to explore enormous opportunities that abound in agriculture. 

  Speaking to newsmen from his country home, Umuchu, Okpaleke stated that youths can take to agriculture instead of searching for unavailable white-collar jobs. 

  “It is irritating to hear that young school leavers do not have jobs because the government has not offered them paid employment. 

  Palm nuts get wasted on palm trees these days because there is nobody to harvest them. 

  “Palm wine trees are wasted everywhere in Igboland because youngmen are no longer able to tap wine. 

  The wine we use during traditional functions today are mainly adulterated, yet young people move about claiming that they do not have job opportunities.”

  He made the observation while interacting with Information officers, at the Eagle Food Processing Industry, Ozalla Akokwa, Umuchu. 

  Okpalaeke, also Chief Executive of Eagle Food Processing Industry said: “we as parents ought to work on our children, inculcate in them the spirit of hard work. 

  “I have engaged workers in my farm lately, who are paid N4,000 each in a day. 

  “I do not know the level of government workers that get as much as N4,000 in a day as wages. 

  “Young people are no longer training in hand crafts for services in blacksmithing, bricklaying, carpentry, iron fitters, mechanics; these classes of crafts are needed and shall always be needed in the society. 

  “It is not wrong for a school leaver to learn a trade or crafts and become self-reliant. 

  Livestock farming is cheap and easy. Get a male and female goat, sheep and fowl, nurture them with attention; in about a year, they are doubled.” Okpalaeke said. 

  The Efi-Igbo farmer said he regretted the attacks on Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) facilities across the country, wondering why people would destroy their own property in the name of agitation. 

  “The Nigerian economy is not good, yet, property is destroyed. Is it not that same bad economy that will be relied upon to replace these facilities?  He queried.