Fayose lauds Babalola for creating employment in Ekiti

Objective of state creation basterdised, says Olowoporoku

Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose, has commended Chief Afe Babalola (SAN) for reducing unemployment in the state through the establishment of the Afe Babalola University (ABUAD) and investing hugely in Agriculture.

Fayose noted that ABUAD was the second employer of labour after the state government, saying so many small and medium scale businesses have sprang up in the state capital through ABUAD.

Represented by his deputy, Prof Kolapo Olusola stated this while declaring open the 2017 edition of the Afe Babalola Agricultural Expo open at the campus of the institution yesterday.

He urged other citizens of the state to emulate the legal icon by initiating programmes in the area of Agriculture, and social services to benefit the people of the state.

Speaking, Babalola urged the state government to include rice as one of the areas to be given priority, pointing out that the Federal Government has pledged to donate a rice processing mill to the university.

He said that the even if the Federal Government renege on its promise, the University will buy the mill adding that rice produce in the state through the assistance of the state government could be processed at ABUAD.

In his keynote lecture titled: Food Sufficiency, a Myth or Reality, the Chief Executive Officer of Chocharis Motors, Cosmas Maduka, said that every Nigerian must take another look at farming and agriculture.He said farming was the only way out of the economic crisis facing the country saying, “If you eat today, you better thank the farmer.”

Meanwhile, one of those that agitated for the creation of Ekiti State, Bode Olowoporoku, has taken a swipe at Ekiti at 21 and argued that the objectives of the founding fathers of the state have been bastardised.Olowoporoku said that the hearts of those who struggled for the creation of the state were bleeding because their dreams have been truncated.

The former Minister of Science and Technology under the President Shehu Sagari government, who briefed newsmen in Ado-Ekiti, yesterday in commemoration of the 21st anniversary of the creation of the state lamented that the lofty ideas that informed the agitation have evaporated.

He also said he was concerned not because of himself but because of the suffering civil servants, teachers, farmers, market women and other categories of the people God has placed in Ekiti as their birth place.