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By Nurudeen Alimi
From left, Principal Consultant, Ahmeed Olanigan; Managing Consultant/CEO, Fatai Afolabi; Mr Ganiyu Falomo and Senior Consultant, Abiodun Makinde, during the long service award ceremony held in honour of three members of staff of Foremost Development Services Limited, in Lagos recently.
The managing consultant/chief executive officer of Foremost Development Services Limited (FDS), Fatai Afolabi, has called on qualified Nigerian youths to take up careers in agro-industrial sectors of the economy.
Afolabi made the call while honouring three members of staff of the company with Long Service Awards during a dinner organised by the firm in Lagos.
Afolabi said that the firm is a wholly indigenous firm of development and sustainability consultants with tremendous expertise and diverse experience spanning well over 28 years in the identification, design, planning, execution and management of development projects at local, national and international levels.
Its industry scope includes technical, economic and management services relating to agriculture, forestry, rural development, natural resources conservation, agro-industry and the environment.
It grew out of the Agricultural Services Department of Knight Frank and Rutley (KFR), the famous Property Development and Estate Agency partnership based in Lagos.
The Agricultural Services Department of KFR was established during the 1970s. It was given further impetus when the Nigerian government decree for backward integration came into effect in the early 1980s.
It was felt that there were opportunities for large-scale agricultural schemes with the major companies particularly those that needed to tap into local raw materials. Incidentally, such companies as Glaxo, Beechams, Guinness, Nigeria Breweries Plc, Flour Mills of Nigeria, CFAO and UAC Nigeria Plc were major clients.
In late 1991, the partnership of KFR divested their interest in the Agricultural Services Department to concentrate on their estate business.
With this background, Foremost Agricultural Services (FAS) was incorporated in 1992 to take over fully the functions and clientele of the Agricultural Services Department of KFR. Foremost Development Services Limited (FDS) was incorporated in 2000.
Since then, FDS has continued to provide qualitative consultancy and management services to high profile clients.