Nigerian filmmaker, actress and director, Omoni Oboli, has called on the Federal Government to make deliberate efforts to attract young people to the agricultural sector through films.
Oboli, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Dioni Vision, an entertainment firm, said there was a need to show the wealth and coolness of agriculture through movies and TV shows in Nollywood, Nigeria’s entertainment industry.
Oboli stated these on Tuesday while speaking at a plenary session of the Feed Nigeria Summit (FNS) 2020 organised by AgroNigeria and held at the Ladi Kwali Conference, Sheraton Hotel and Towers, Abuja.
The session, tagged the AgroNolly Session, had the theme: AgroNolly: Unleashing the Creative Industry to Achieve Policy Targets.
Feed Nigeria Summit, hosted annually by AgroNigeria, is famed as Nigeria’s foremost agricultural sector convocation aimed at catalyzing transformational progress for the country’s agriculture.
This year’s edition of the Summit, which was themed: Agribusiness: Leading Nigeria’s Recovery, was held on Tuesday and Wednesday, December 1st and 2nd, 2020.
Speaking virtually during the session, Oboli noted that film is the strongest platform to pass a message.
She noted that it would take a maximum of two years of consistent messaging to spread the message of get-involved-in-agriculture to Nigerian youths.
“Several plans are already in place. It is something that has been very close to my heart for a very long time. I have written scripts and programmes that are already in place. They just need to be produced.
“The government would have to work with us to enlarge their agriculture message to the large Nigerian youth population.”
In his reaction, the Director of Planning and Policy Coordination at the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Zubairu Abdullahi, assured of the Ministry’s readiness to work closely with Omoni Oboli and the Nollywood industry to move the agricultural sector forward.
Abdullahi, who decried the level of bad information on agriculture in the public space, added that the results of government policies and interventions do not get cascaded to the grassroots because of “bad rumours”.
He, therefore, canvassed for the use of information and entertainment to change the landscape of the country’s agricultural sector.
SOURCE: AGRONIGERIA
