The unified Northern Nigeria Youths Forum has canvassed support for Central bank Governor, Godwin Emefiele for president come 2023.
They also assured to donate N50 million if he declare for the race.
Briefing newsmen on Tuesday in Gusau, the Zamfara State capital, Director General of the forum, Dr Ibrahim Bature said they were in the State as part of consultations to call on Godwin Emefiele to come out and contest for president.
According to him, the CBN Governor has all it takes to be the next president considering his track records and huge investment on Agriculture.
“Dr Godwin Emefiele is the Nigeria’s hope for industrial revolution through Agriculture, he is the key to Nigeria’s economic growth”.
He stressed that Nigeria been a single face economy that solely relies on income from crude oil foreign exchange, need to source economic development geared on self-reliance, “hence, diversification of the Nigerian economy becomes compelling and urgent.
“Dr Godwin Emefiele knowing the importance and strength of Agriculture, came up with life saving initiatives in Agricultural sector to boost critical sectors of the economy, increase GDP growth, create employment and reduce poverty rate through programmes”.
Also in a remark, the forum public relations officer, Mallam Aliyu Mohammed Sani explained that Godwin Emefiele has modified the Agricultural Credit Guarantee Scheme in the country.
“In the last four years CBN has laid a solid import-substitution agriculture intervention policy in ten commodities that included rice, wheat, maize, cotton, palm oil, cassava, tomatoes, poultry, milk/dairy products and livestock.
“The mechanized production of these commodities to enhance economies of scale have achieved higher value addition and ensured greater export value.
“Reductions were continuously observed in the Bank’s monthly food import bill from US$665.4 million in January 2015 to US$160.4 million as at October 2018; a cumulative fall of 75.9 percent and an implied savings of over US$21 billion on food imports alone over that period. Most evident were the 97.3 percent cumulative reduction in monthly rice import bills, 99.6 percent in fish, 81.3 percent in milk, 63.7 percent in sugar, and 60.5 percent in wheat.
“With this, Nigeria’s GDP had remained positive, driven by improvements in agriculture, as well as intervention programmes of the Bank, along with sustained supply of foreign exchange and stability of the Naira.
“Furthermore, under the Godwin led administration of CBN, the Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agriculture Lending (NIRSAL) has facilitated over N102 billion in loans from commercial banks across agricultural value chain in Nigeria, impacting about 2 million lives and creating over 40,000 jobs.
“Few days ago, Dr Emefiele was in Kaduna at a maize pyramid, where gains and improvements in the area of maize farming was celebrated”.
He further revealed that Agriculture is the secret and key to the industrialization policy that turned around economic strength of many developed countries of the world.
“In Nigeria, Dr Godwin Emefiele is the key to Nigeria’s Agricultural revolution, the green icon, the brain behind all the initiatives and success of the Nigerian economy particularly, Agriculture”.
The unified northern Nigeria youths therefore called on stakeholders and teeming population of Zamfara State, to join them in calling on the seasoned, versatile, diverse economist and a technocrat to contest for the president of Nigeria, come 2023.
Earlier, the Zamfara State coordinator of the forum Ibrahim Aliyu said the aspiration of Dr. Godwin Emefiele is highly welcome in the State for his excellent and well designed policies.
He assured that the Unified Northern Nigeria Youth Forum for Emefiele, Zamfara State has promised to mobilize 50 million naira donation to campaign fund if Dr. Emefiele accept the call and contest for President come 2023.
