Senator Dr Ifeanyi Okowa, Delta State Governor.

By Our Correspondent

Delta State Governor, Senator Dr Ifeanyi Okowa has congratulated President of the African Development Bank, (ADB), Dr Akinwumi Adesina, on his emergence as the 2017 World Food Prize Laureate.

Governor Okowa in a statement issued on Tuesday in Asaba by his Chief Press Secretary, Charles Aniagwu lauded the outstanding contributions of Adesina towards  food security around the world, adding that the former Minister has once again brought pride and honour to Nigeria by winning the coveted prize.

According to Governor Okowa, Governor recalled with pride how Adesina as a serving Minister of Agriculture in Nigeria, formulated the Agricultural Transformation Agenda under which the E-Wallet system of distribution of agricultural inputs, the first of its kind, was introduced.

“On behalf of the government and people of Delta State,  I congratulate Dr Akinwumi Adesina, a former Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture and now President of the African Development Bank, ADB on his emergence as the 2017 World Food Prize Laureate  for his outstanding contributions to the growth of production and reduction of hunger in the history of Nigeria.

“Under Adesina as Minister of Agriculture, farmers in Nigeria received alerts on their phones to collect their allocation of inputs for the first time in the history of agriculture in Nigeria.

“Our national food production expanded by an additional 21million metric tonnes of food within three years which led to a decline in Nigeria’s food import bill by N466billion from one trillion naira during the Goodluck Jonathan administration”

Governor Okowa further commended Dr Adesina for cleaning up the corrupt fertiliser industry, which for over 40 years was riddled with corruption under the old order.

He said his administration’s SMART Agenda was crafted to harness the gains made by the Agricultural Transformation Agenda as midwifed by the former Minister.