 Gómba state, aláji Muhamedinua yá yá, yó excellence is the deputy governor of Gómba state, Dr. Manasa Daniel Jatoh, members of the National Assembly President, especially Senator Saidu Al-Kali and Senator D.K. Amos, the former governor of Gómba state, distinguished Senator Mohamed Danjou Magoje, the Honourable Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Issa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, the Honourable Minister of State for Industry, Trade and Investment, Ambassador Mariam Khachagun, the right Honourable Speaker of the Gómba state House of Assembly, Honourable Abu Bakar Lughe Rehwal and other members of the Gómba state House of Assembly President, Secretary to the Government of Gómba state, Professor Ibrahim Abu Bakar and Jodi and other members of the Gómba state Executive Council President. I'm very glad to be here in Gómba state, the jewel of the Savannah and I bring you warm greetings from President Mohamedu Buhari, who holds the state very dearly to his heart. Let me take this opportunity to extend my sincere appreciation to his Excellency, the dynamic governor of this state, Governor Mohamedu Inua Yaya. First for the invitation to be here and to join his hard-working team in all that they're doing and all the great work that is being done here. And also for the encouragement that he has given to so many in this state, and more importantly his government's commitment to promoting small and medium-sized businesses in this state. Your Excellency, despite the huge challenges that this state faces, I have been impressed by the can-do spirit of your government and the people of this state. This is why Gómba state is a state of great promise and why I'm convinced that this is a state that will demonstrate to Nigeria and the world that supporting small businesses and setting and spending public resources on the right priorities will bring prosperity, growth, jobs and poverty reduction. And that all of these are possible. I note for example that in your budget this year, the budget of resilience, you will be investing significantly in infrastructure and social investment to deal with extreme poverty. I've also followed the recent launching of the health insurance scheme. These are critical steps in human capital development alongside the physical infrastructure development which are the strong foundations for the rapid development led by smaller medium enterprises. So not surprisingly, a stated ambition or vision of this state is to be truly the industrial hub of the northeast. That is in sight, especially as you focus on agro-processing the agro-processing value chain. Some time ago, I read a piece on the great successes being recorded in cotton production and processing here in Gómba state with the support of the CBN's anchor boroughs programme. This is clearly a great opportunity as the cotton growing and processing value chain will create opportunities for several small and medium-scale businesses. Earlier today, I visited the amazing and inspiring ground-up oil and rice processing hub, a place where thousands of young people are employed, producing tons of ground-up oil daily and hundreds of thousands of people that M&M's can use at a reasonable cost, thus pairing them the financial burden of having to buy their own equipment. Where possible, these shared facilities will be pre-certified by the relevant regulatory agencies. A good example is the 200,000 capacity YAM storage facility for micro-small and medium enterprises in Bedouin state at the Zaki BM International YAM market. The storage facility is designed to address the problem of post harvest losses, which is one of the greatest impediments to actualising the immense potential of the agricultural sector. Nigeria produces 17 million tons of YAM's annual but loses almost 40% of this yield due to the lack of storage. I am also glad to note the commitment of the state government to investing in young people and their innovative efforts. And we've seen that all around here today. At the height of our fears about obtaining ventilators at the height of the pandemic, I read about three young men here in Gombe state who invented Nigeria's first medical grade ventilator. One of them, Aliyu Hazan, spoke about how they had worked very hard in a room in his home where they had slept and developed all of the various inventions that culminated in the ventilator. The strength of the economy of this state and our nation is in the innovative prowess and entrepreneurship of our young people. We have both talent and human resources in abundance. So today, we are witnessing an important development in our national life. Our young people are proving that they are capable, that they can do wonderful things and they are showing us the way of the future. This 27th edition of the National MSME Clinic, as you know, is a federal government initiative to work with state governments to support small businesses. The reason why this is necessary is because small businesses are the engine of growth of any economy. MSMEs also employ the largest numbers of people. So the clinics were designed to bring regulatory agencies whose work affects the business experience of MSMEs to meet with these small businesses. This gives MSMEs an opportunity to bring their business-related concerns to the attention of the regulatory agencies for solutions. This is a very important part of the work that this federal government initiative does. So we are looking forward to ensuring that even in this state, in Gombe state, we are able to bring the regulatory agencies as we have done today so that they themselves can see what the problems of the small businesses are and help them to achieve these ends. One of the very important initiatives of the federal government which President Muhammad-e-Buhari himself oversaw was immediately we began to see the economic fallout of the pandemic. The President decided that we must support small businesses all across the country and what he did was to constitute what we call the Economic Sustainability Committee which he asked me to have and we drew up a plan, a plan to help the people of the businesses, young people who are in business and several others including those who are vulnerable in one way or the other. One of the very important parts of that program is the survival fund and we have seen already some of those beneficiaries of the survival fund and what we have been able to do here is that this program and this survival fund is a program managed by the steering committee headed by Ambassador Maryam Katagu who spoke a few minutes ago the Honourable Minister of State for Industry, Trade and Investment and Gombe State has been actively engaged in ensuring that its citizens benefit from all of the tracks of the MSME related schemes. So we have a few of those programs and you've seen some of those who have benefited already. Thus far in the payroll support for Gombe State we have ensured that about 9,085 employees from close to 2,000 MSMEs in the educational sector have benefited from the scheme. Another 10,000 artisans and transporters in this state have also benefited from the scheme up to 6,000 new business names have been registered free of charge with the CAC from businesses that are investing. In all MSMEs in Gombe State have been supported by the federal government with almost 1.2 billion Naira under the economic sustainability plan and there is more to come. The federal government is going to provide even more support because as we've been informed by the chairperson and project coordinator that additional businesses and employees in Gombe State are currently undergoing verification with a view to being shortlisted for employment, for payment. So this state will receive even more support from the federal government in the coming months. In conclusion, I'd like to say that our country depends entirely on the young people, on the small businesses and we have seen so many of them here today. Even going around here today, going around the stores today we have seen so many young men and women who are producing things, who are inventing things, who are doing great things. The future of our country rests in the hands of new young people and the business owners, the entrepreneurs all over this state and all over our country. And I want to say that the federal government pledges to work with the state government with the Gombe State government to give you all the support that you need in order to ensure that your businesses succeed. God bless Gombe State, God bless the federal republic of Nigeria. Thank you.