Yemisi Izuora
Nigeria’s High Commissioner to Pakistan, Ashimiyu A Olaniyi has called for stronger agriculture and research collaboration between Nigeria and Pakistan to ensure food security and rural development.
The Commission made the call when he visited the University of Agriculture Faisalabad, UAF, on Friday and called on UAF Vice-Chancellor Dr Zafar Iqbal Randhawa along with deans and directors at Syndicate Room, UAF.
He said that Pakistan and Nigeria were enjoying good relations and the contribution of agriculture in Pakistan’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was around 21 per cent whereas in the agriculture of Nigerian GDP, it was 23 per cent.
He said that Nigeria has several agricultural universities and research institutes in which collaborations would help address common agricultural challenges and to learn from each other.
“Our country was a natural oil and gas producing country whereas it was blessed with good agricultural produces”, he maintained, adding that collaboration especially in cotton and textile need to be further cemented to get benefit from each other experiences.
He said that the UAF was a famous university and centre of excellence in agriculture and it was playing a vital role in food security.
Dr Zafar Iqbal Randhawa said that the UAF and Nigerian institutions have collaborated in the field of the agriculture would help bring tangible results. He said that agriculture was the backbone of the economy and the UAF was enjoying good relations with the educational and agricultural institutions worldwide.
He said that Pakistan was producing surplus production in the all major crops.
He said that collaborative work would bring the tangible result to increase the production and get benefit from each other experiences.
Ashimiyu, also visited different laboratories of Horticultural Sciences, Soil Sciences and Centre for Agricultural Biochemistry and Biotechnology (CABB) in the area.