By Gabriel Olawale

THE  cooperative arms of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, RCCG, Apapa,  has unveiled  its plan to produce 200 millionaire farmers  to reduce the burden of unemployment in the country this   year.

Speaking during a one-day intensive training program held in Lagos for existing and aspiring farmers, the President of Excel Multipurpose Cooperative Society, Pastor Kayode Vincent,  said that  Lagosian consumed a minimum of N3 billion foods on a daily basis, there are no excuses for unemployment.

Vincent pointed out that there are opportunities everywhere but required passion and commitment to key into it, “Let assume that we have 15 million people in Lagos and our feeding budget each per day is N200, if we multiplied it, it will be approximately N3 billion. In which I belief is more than that.”

Pastor Enoch  Adeboye, General Overseer, RCCG annointing Governor Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo State at the 2016 Holy Ghost Congress

He explained that the mandate of the cooperative was to prepare people to key into these opportunities and be self sufficient to contribute meaningfully to the economy.

“The first edition of our training yields a significant number of farmers that have started practising in different aspect such as poultry production, crop production among others.  One of our members, who started September last year, today she has about 4, 000 birds and employed significant numbers of people.”

Vincent, however, warned that people should not venture into agriculture business because of recession even as he task government to be consistence in their policies.

Operation feed the nation

“We don’t want people to see agriculture as a way out of recession but as a necessity to feed our people. Diversification is not a new word, if we cast our mind back to 1976, operation feed the nation, and when the economy improved people abandon farming. What we are saying is that we don’t want recession farmer, we want people that have passion and understand the business aspect of it.” He urged that people should not go into farming because others are doing it but farm because they are ready for it, equipped for it and had the knowledge.

On his part, Team Lead, Excel Planning Committee, Pastor Olufemi Obaweya said that during his tour around the developed world, he noticed that the urban areas are usually surrounded by farm lands.

“If you are about to land all you see is farm land but in Nigeria what you see is forest. In some of the developed world, agriculture is their number one industry, because a nation that cannot feed itself is not yet a nation.