A Professor of Soil Science, Ebong Eshett, on Tuesday called on the federal government to re-visit the report of Vision 20:20:20 on the agriculture as a springboard for Nigeria's economic development.

Eshett made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja.

He said the right platform for such economic development would be the recommendations of the 2009 Agriculture and Food Security Thematic Group of Vision 20:20:20.

“The recommendations we arrived at can best be described as a master piece.

“Several other countries of the world such as Singapore, Malaysia, Canada and Britain have used agriculture as a platform to attain high level of economic development.

“Borrowing a leap from those countries and we can do the same and making Nigeria to advance, to become one of the strong economies in the world by year 20:2020.”

The don advised the government to re-visit the report and co-opt the members of the committee into the implementation team.

Eshette, a former Deputy Vice-Chancellor Academics, Federal University of Technology, Owerri, said that the recommendations were comprehensive to transform the economy of the country.

“We said we should look at the soil and how we can improve the soil to be able to give us the maximum productivity, the soil of different parts of this country.

“We said we should look at the various aspects of agriculture, those who are fishing, those who are planting and so on.

“We should look at our inability to store our harvests because most times,most of our harvests are consumed within any given growing season, such that in subsequent growing season, we do not have anything to fall back on.”

He further urged the Federal Government to provide financial assistance for youths to enable them to embrace agriculture.

The don also appealed to Nigerian youths to study agriculture in tertiary institutions so as to acquire the requisite knowledge in the sector.

According him, “Agriculture is a lucrative occupation.” (NAN)

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