Seriki Adinoyi in Jos
The member representing Langtang North/Langtang South in the Federal House of Representative, Beni Lar, in collaboration with Federal Institute of Industrial Research (FIIRO) has commenced a two-week training for over 200 members of her constituency on cassava production, processing and tomatoes processing and preservation.
Speaking at the inauguration of the event which took place in Langtang, the Lar said the constituency is determined to reduce poverty to the barest minimal.
He also noted that the participants were selected from all the wards of the constituency irrespective of political party affiliation.
The lawmaker who was represented by the senior legislative aide, Nankpak Gono, said the training would enable youths and women of the area to derive maximum benefits from processing cassava into different products and properly package them for economic purposes.
She said, “Women and youths are the most vulnerable in our society, and yet the future of any country lies squarely on the youths.
“Before now, what we knew was only how to process cassava into garri but at the end of this training, the beneficiaries will be able to process cassava into several different products.
“Some of these products are Garri, Fufu, cassava flour, starch, ethanol and other products in cassava value chain which will increase their income as well as end post-harvest loss of cassava.
“My constituency produces large quantity of cassava but experience post-harvest loss, but this training will put an end to the loss as we will now know various ways to process cassava.”
She urged the beneficiaries to take the training seriously to enable them to put into good use what they have learnt.
FIIRO North Central Zonal Coordinator Mr. Philip Pius, said the institute was partnering with the lawmaker to empower youths and women in the area.
He said FIIRO is a government agency under the supervision of the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology (FMST) Abuja, and has deployed its mandate to ensuring diversification of the economy most especially industrialisation by the development and promotion of micro, small and medium enterprise, this has led to the proliferation of some of the following industry, weaning food and breakfast cereals such as soy ogi, palm wine bottling and preservation ,cassava processing into garri ,cassava flour, glucose syrup.
He added that technology transfer and techno entrepreneurship training programmes have produced over 500,000 entrepreneurs across Nigeria.
