Governor Hyacinth Alia of Benue State was on Vice President Kashim Shettima’s delegation to New York for the 79th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA79). He speaks on the gains of the global event for Nigeria and his government’s efforts to revive agriculture in Benue State among other issues. Newsquest brings the excerpts:
Q: What progress has Benue State made regarding the attainment of SDG goals?
Part of what we made presentations during our meeting with the United Nations (UN) officials here in New York is on the efforts we have put in place in Benue State and the target is poverty alleviation. We are trying to improve generally, the lives of our people. As an agrarian State, in the agriculture sector, we have bought several tractors to increase and improve our farms.
That is the primary thing we do, and we can give all the farm inputs to our people to get them back to the farms. We help along the lines of cutting off a number of the post-harvest waste we usually experience as one of the major hurdles we have been experiencing. I think we shall have slashed down a number of the poverty indices that we experience.
Where we need to go forward next would be processing industrialization. We need collaboration, we need the partnerships in all the efforts we are putting in, for these things to happen.
Q: What is happening in the health sector?
On the front lines of health care, if we cannot take proper care of the primary health system, then we are not helping so much. We will be suffering the second tier, and then the third tier, the tertiary. So, what we need to do is to reinvent. Efforts have been in place already but again, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has been very supportive and paramountly supportive of what we can do next to reach out to the unreachable areas. When we experience flood, it makes life even more cumbersome and difficult to access those places. So these are the areas we are targeting.
Q: Can you speak about promoting small businesses in the State?
On the areas of raising small businesses, again, you do that, I know we are going to trim down a number of those who have formed the great percentage of all this poverty. What the federal government does in our support again, requires some further collaboration. At this meeting, we invited them to see, how they can collaborate, and then to see how we can also create that data in all the efforts we have made. Is there any progress? Yes, there is yes there progress. Is it good enough? Can it be sustainable?
So these are the areas we are now trying to see if we are putting efforts in there, we are talking about the entire Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) programme lasting into just the next few years ahead now. Would the efforts put in place be good enough to sustain, to improve, to help, and for us to say that we have done this much, and the people also can clap that, yes, their lives have been improved.
So, we know that some work is done, much more work is there to have the entire accomplishment of these projects and then we just continually, keep on with the strike.
