Bishop David Oyedepo, the Chancellor, Landmark University, Omu-Aran, Kwara State, on Wednesday said raising agricultural practitioners was one of the best solutions to food scarcity in the country.
Oyedepo, the founder of the Living Faith Worldwide International, also known as Winners Chapel, gave the suggestions during the institution’s 6th Founder’s Day celebration in Omu-Aran.
He said there was no substitute for food and the software needed to address the challenges posed by food insufficiency.
Oyedepo said: “The best solution is raising agricultural practitioners through quality and innovative education to tackle the difficulties in the sector, including the notable food deficit.
“Despite the breakthroughs in the development of information technology, there is yet to be any substitute to food and software in addressing the challenges posed by its unavailability.”
Oyedepo, represented by Prof. Aize Obayan, the university’s Vice-Chancellor, said it was high time agriculture stakeholders stopped paying leap services to its transformation and development.
He said that substantial part of the nation’s abundant land resources scattered around its six geopolitical regions still remained under-utilised.
According to him, there is the need to evolve practical solutions to improving agriculture through productive learning, product research and development.
Oyedepo said: “We cannot drive leverages in agriculture without innovative thoughts and thinking.
“This is because every land you find around you is a gold mine, which must be explored.”
Obayan, in her own speech, said the institution since its inception six years ago, has continued to maintain stable academic calendar and life-applicable qualitative education.
The Vice-Chancellor said these sterling qualities had projected the institution as a cynosure among its peers and to the outside world.
She listed the striking professional accomplishment of Kenechukwu Okafor, a 500-level student of the Department of Mechanical Engineering who won the National Award of Global Student Entrepreneurship among the institution’s recent achievements.
Ademola Olorunfemi, the guest lecturer, described the institution’s agrarian revolution as one that preceded the nation’s realisation of the need to be sufficient in food production.
He spoke on: “Leveraging on Innovation and Engineering in Breaking New Grounds for Sustainable Agricultural Development in Nigeria.’’
Olorunfemi said the nation’s economic recession was a good pointer to the timeliness of the topic as governments’ and stakeholders were making frantic efforts to use agriculture as a catalyst to solve food insufficiency.
He said innovation in agriculture possessed the potential to expand yields, increase efficiency, reduce waste and address concerns about toxicity, safety and the environment.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the institution under the Landmark University Community Development Impact Initiative had earlier donated some equipment to the Omu-Aran Medium Prison as parts of the founder’s day celebration.
Other highlights of the celebration were products’ exhibition as well as planting of economic trees.
