at 2.00 pm to felicitate with him on his appointment as the Chief Executive Officer. The President, Professor Jayeoba, noted that it was with great pleasure that The Association of Deans of Agriculture in Nigeria Universities rejoice with the Executive Secretary, Arch. Sunny Echono, on his appointment to serve the country in this new capacity. The President further acknowledged, without any doubt, that the ES will raise the bars of excellence in TETFund that will surpass those of his predecessors. Thereafter, the President reiterated the new thinking of ADAN in
agriculture education which is hinged on modernization of training and capacity building that will forestall the drudgery of crude tools and implements hitherto used in many universities until recently. ADAN, therefore, drew
the attention of the TETFund Management to the marginalization of Faculties of Agriculture from benefiting maximally from its interventions that should have advanced this new focus. It, therefore, sought special consideration of the Executive Secretary for improved collaboration and partnership aimed at strengthening agriculture education through innovative and high quality teaching and research that will produce graduates that are well equipped with skills for
self-reliance to be able to contribute sustainably to the the agricultural sector of the economy of the country. According to the President, agriculture should be seen a profession that require best modern practices and skills acquisition since it has implication for other professional programmes like medicine, pharmacy, engineering, etc. At present, he said, ADAN is focusing on making agriculture a business-oriented entreprise. The Association believes that Nigeria, with its natural and human resource endowments, should not have any acceptable reason to be food deficient. Sequel to this, the current rethinking of ADAN is to spearhead the development of modern and  world class bestpractices in the entire Nigerian agriculture value chain. This will attract admission seekers in the Universities into agriculture and agriculture-related programmes to build their capacity for the development and/or utilization of modernised production, processing, storage and transportation technologies and facilities that will guarantee food and nutritional security in the country and the sub-region. He also advocated for deliberate commodity research
interventions by TETFund. Towards implementation of these planned desirable transformation of agriculture, there was a need for more support from the government, its relevant agencies and the private sector, the President said. ADAN, therefore, requested for more strategic collaboration and partnership with TETFund. The President expressed hope that with the unforgettable leadership contributions that the ES made to agricultural and educational sectors for sustainable national developments while he was the Permanent Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development as well as Federal Ministry of Education from where he retired, there will be more prompt special interventions in agriculture education and capacity building of the experts. The President hinged this on the good standing relationship ADAN has with the ES when he was the Permanent Secretary at both Ministries, particularly when he was a Member of the Board of TETFund during which he made significant contributions to the establishment of the Agricultural Incubation Centres. It was in this regards that the wisdom and considerations of the Executive Secretary were humbly sought as follows:

1) Formal Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to establish a legal framework between TETFund and ADAN.

2) Intervention towards making the Nine (9) already established Agricultural Incubation Centres (AICs) fully functional and the continuation of the establishment of AICs in remaining 45 Faculties of Agriculture in the Universities that are yet to benefit.

3) Funding support for ADAN Journal of Agriculture.

4) Commodity-based research funding interventions for sustainable food and nutrition
security.
5) Specific agricultural-based interventions to end the age long marginalization of the
Faculties of Agriculture in the Universities.
6) Improved training and capacity building for Faculties of Agriculture staff.
7) Provision state of the art agricultural machinery, farm tools, irrigation technology,
equipment and other facilities towards modernizing agricultural training using best
practices in order to make it attractive to students and farmers.
8) Sustained collaborative support towards making agriculture a competitively profitable
business rather than an art and practice of growing crops and rearing livestock.
9) Provision of a Desk Officer for ADAN at the TETFund.
10) Facilitating research on prototype farm tools, quality seed production, linking farmers
to sustainable markets, value addition, agribusiness development etc.
11) Provision of dedicated agriculture sub-theme in NRF and other research grant
interventions because of the peculiarity of agriculture to the economy.
12) Interventions for more agriculture-based Centre of Excellence in the Universities.
13) ADAN should be kindly considered to be represented in the Technical Review Committees.

Responding the ES-TETFund, Arch. Sunny Echono, applauded the kind gesture of ADAN especially in felicitating with him and for the confidence the Association reposed in him. He appreciated the courtesy call and noted that agriculture, in deed was a critical sector of the economy that require all the supports needed to grow and develop sustainably. He encouraged ADAN to leave no stone unturned in modernizing agriculture and mount better courses to make it more attractive. He advised ADAN to leverage on technology, mechanization and development of prototype (small tool) farm implements that are cheaper compared to heavy machinery and that can easily be operated by smallholder farmers to reduce drudgery in manual farm operations commonly practiced. The ES-TETFund added the urgent need for improved agronomic practices to make the entire value chain a profitable business. He did not forget to stress the need for diversification of agricultural enterprise (crops, livestock, fisheries, forestry, etc) and quality seed production that will guarantee high yield and linking farmers to sustainable markets to avoid the middlemen, especially the emerging foreign ones who deprives the farmers the opportunity of enhanced income to beecome richer as the case with several develope countries where farmers are among the wealthiest people. Emphasing that Nigeria has the population that will guarantee demand from agricultural produce and products, the ESTETFund expressed his believe that creating direct markets for the farmers will strengthen
industrialization in the country. The Executive Secretary who spoke as if he was a full time agriculturist, pledged that TETFund will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with ADAN in promoting agricultural education transformation,
stressing that the country has the people and the needed knowledge base. He assured ADAN of the readiness of TETFund under his administration to partner with the Association within its mandate of strengthening agriculture education through capacity building, training and support for the Agriculture Incubation Centres which he expressly informed that more of the AICs will be established. He rounded up by informing ADAN that TETFund has just signed a partnership programme with Brazil due to its seeming similar agricultural production system like that of Nigeria and that the number of staff training limit will increase from the current 200 to 500. The interactive session which lasted for about one hour and five minutes had the Board of Trustess Chairman, Professor David-Abraham give the vote of thanks on behalf of ADAN as it rose at 3.05 pm.