Business
Don Urges Govt To Modernise Agric Tools
A University lecturer Dele Olowokudejo, has said that Nigeria could meet her food requirements if indigenous technologies were modernised and consciously utilised.
Olowokudejo, a professor of Botany and Microbiology at the University of Lagos, said that this had become necessary to check food shortages in the country.
“Hunger was never a challenge to our forebears in spite of subsistent production and should not be the case with our endowments from nature,’’ he told newsmen.
He said that Nigeria had the landmass, clement climatic condition and other natural resources to overcome food shortages.
He added that the Nigerian government should tap into its vast human resources to secure the nation’s nutritional needs.
Olowokudejo reiterated that there was the need to intensify research in the area of microbiology to enhance food storage processes and the health needs of Nigerians.
According to him, it is very important to secure food from getting spoilt due to the country’s poor storage facilities.
He said that increase in government’s budgetary allocation to the education sector was important to “overcome the crises of food insecurity and poverty’’ in the country.
“The nation needs to continuously produce the intelligentsia that will sustain the fight against malnutrition, high mortality and morbidity rates and other ramifications of development in the country,’’ he said