The Presidential Amnesty Programme is partnering with the National Board for Technology Incubation (NBTI) to improve the quality and certification of agricultural and other products of its beneficiaries trained and empowered in the agric and allied sector.
To achieve this, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Office of the Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta and Coordinator, Amnesty Programme, Prof. Charles Dokubo, and the NBTI will be signed tomorrow, in Abuja.
In a statement by Dokubo’s Special Assistant (Media), Murphy Ganagana, this was sequel to approval granted Amnesty by the Director General, National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, to use 23 technology incubation centres allocated to it by the NBTI for cluster manufacturing by beneficiaries.
The centres would be used by Amnesty beneficiaries trained and empowered in the agricultural sector to produce their products for the purpose of obtaining NAFDAC registration numbers.
Beneficiaries of the Amnesty Programme trained on production of rice, garri, plantain-flour, plantain-chips, chin-chin, smoked fish, chicken, snail, fruit juice and cosmetics, among others, will benefit from the partnership. The 23 NBTI technology incubation centres approved for the Amnesty Programme to be used by the beneficiaries are located in Edo, Abia, Imo, Ondo, Rivers, Cross Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa and Delta states.
Aside the MOU with the NBTI, the Amnesty Programme Small Business Support Desk, an initiative of Dokubo, is to ensure that all graduates of Amnesty Programme vocational training centres trained on production of NAFDAC regulated products are registered for safety, efficacy, distribution and sale of their products.
Prof. Dokubo assured of his readiness to partner on technology incubation when the NBTI management, led by the Director General, Dr. Mohammed Jubrin, visited him in his office. Dokubo said: “I think there is a necessity for us to work together to make sure that we can get those certifications that will enable people to consume what we produce, so that they will not create any harm for those who eat our products.”