An appeal has gone to the Rivers State government to resuscitate the state owned School to Land Authority  in order to curb unemployment among young school leavers in the state.

Speaking to newsmen at his country home , Owerewere, in the Emughan district of Abua, in the Abua/Odual local government area of the state over the weekend , an agricultural expert, Engr Mensah Muzan explained that the authority was not moribund rather its problem was administrative in nature.

“School to land is not moribund, it is not being administered the way it should be.

“It is not being backed financially the way it should be just as it used to be when it was first established”, he explained.

According to him, if school to land was reintroduced on a proper footing, unemployment would be a thing of the past because, if young school leavers were engaged and groomed in various farming techniques and allocated plots, they would be meaningfully engaged.

The Rivers State University of Science and Technology trained agricultural engineer was of the view that if government provided seedlings and help them plant their crops and even assist during harvest, and deduct government expense after sales, the balance would be enough to make income for the young farmers.

“We give them the inputs ranging from seedlings to planting and at the time  of harvest, we even assist them.

“For example, if it is rice, we will mill the rice, and when we will mill the rice we cost it. We deduct government expenses and give them the balance income, so these are some of the ways we can curb unemployment”, he adviced.

According to Engr. Muzan, if government revatalises the STLA, work at the farms would not be strenuous because government will use their bulldozers tractors and other agricultural equipment which would boost output and at the end, the beneficiaries will own the farms.

“Basically, we would be using government vehicles to transport them to the various farms and at the end of the day they become farm owners and even stipend would be given to them”.

Engr Muzan said the essence of having a functional STLA was that our young school leavers do not roam the streets rather they should own their own farms even at the expense of the government because they are the responsibility of the government.

“The important thing was that they were learning so that at the end of the day, they want to be a farmer, and will be given a plot of land and government will provide the inputs, the profit becomes yours.

“That is the essence of school to land, that is coming from school to the land. “It is unfortunate now that we are relegating agriculture to the background, if not agriculture is the basic employer of labour”.

Engr Muzan said that in virtually every sector of agriculture, Rivers State has comparative advantage ranging from cash and food crops, diary and poultry as well as aquaculture development .

“In Rivers State, many people think we don’t have the potential. At STLA then, we were planting cow pea, what we call beans in Rivers State. “We were planting soya bean and corn in Rivers State, we became a threat to those who bring maize from the North. “We were rearing rams, that is sheep, we have the potential. In Rivers state, we should be respected in terms of agriculture.

“If you come to aquaculture and fish farming, we have the natural resources. In certain parts of this country, we need to pump water to feed fish farms.

“But in this place, we only have to construct a canal, regulate and direct the water to where ever we want it to flow to for optimal use”, he explained.

Expressing egret at the sorry state of some of the state owned agro based industries  like Rison Palm, Rivers Vegetables Oil Company, RIVOC, Rivers Gulf Fisheries, he opined that if these establishments were managed well, school to land would have been only a ground  for grooming young people to become farmers.

“For example, if RIVOC, Rison palm and Gulf Fisheries were fully utilized, I think school to land will only be were  wanted to groom our children to become farmers.

“I mean good farmers as we have in the United States. A farmer is not a poor man and agriculture to me is a noble profession.

“If you don’t feed well, if you don’t feed your country, if you don’t feed your community and your immediate family, the people will become sicklers.

“Good feeding will breed healthy citizens” he adviced.

In terms of social integration, Engr Muzan explained that if school to land was revatalised, it would help cement the much needed cultural integration among the various local government areas of the state.

“I believe that if young farmers from different parts of the state come to your community, the mutual benefits are very very enormous.

“Let us not talk about other things but the culture that will come out of the situation will make you know that basically there is something good in school to land.

“In our rural areas, people who never saw bulldozers at work saw them.

“If we want to encourage our children to stop roaming the streets, let us get back to the farms that were established then by the school to land authority across the state and re-activate them”, he counseled.

He further urged the state government to take a second look and restore the dwindling for tunes of school to land as according to him, in the early days of school to land, products like eggs, garri, beans, yams, chicken and plantain where made available to civil servants at subsidized prices.

While advicing the state government to appoint competent personnel to man the ailing outfit, he stressed that those so appointed should be people who have the interest of farming at heart, just as the founder of school to land, Police Commissioner Fedelis Oyaghilome who visited the farms once every Friday.