The Abia Livelihood Improvement Family Enterprises, Niger Delta, LIFE-ND, Coordinator, Uchenna Rowland Onyeizu, Ph.D, said the Project had for the past five years, performed exceedingly well, creating jobs, food security and sustainable income in the Niger Delta region.
The Coordinator who was addressing journalists in Umuahia, last week, revealed that the excellent performance of the Project had attracted from the funders, additional funding to empower more 6,000 youths besides the 4,300 beneficiaries in the state.
Dr Onyeizu revealed that the Project which began in 2020 would wind up its first phase in March, leading to the strategic creation of exit organisation, LIFE-ND Agribusiness Innovative Forum, (LAbiF), which is ongoing in 100 communities in the state, to deepen the successes of the Project including the beneficiaries and facilities.
"Within the exit plan is to build institutions and platforms that would carry out what we have started as a Project within the communities, especially where we have been able to intervene," he said.
Speaking on the sustainability of LAbiF, he explained that the Forum had been established in the national, state and community levels, having elected executives to independently run its affairs and financing.
He described LAbiF as an amalgam of farmer's groups, financial institutions, cooperatives, off-takers and other stakeholders within the value chains of cassava, poultry, fisheries and oil palm processing and marketing, adding that a legal framework and capacity building would be the fulcrum of its survival, while charging them to be diligent "to take the bull by the horns".
Mr Clement Kanu Ikoro, who described the Forum as "self-standing and self-sustaining", revealed that the organisation had been registered in Cooperate Affairs Commission, (CAC), as negotiation was ongoing to establish the Forum in a micro-finance institution, where all stakeholders would have shares, adding that a LAbiF National Summit would hold in Abuja in June with farmers from the Niger Delta region to participate.
Deacon Anthony Nwaobilor, the Abia LIFE-ND, Rural Institution, Youth and Gender Officer explained that the current exercise of electing LAbiF leaders in all the participating communities was to bring together all the actors in agribusinesses for effective and efficient management of agricultural practices in these communities.
Mr Marizu Godswill Nkemakolam, who emerged as the LAbiF chairman in Obingwa Obi, Isiala Ngwa South Local Government Area, promised never to allow the decay of achievements in his community. LAbiF was first launched in Calabar, Cross River State on February 29,2024.
