Nigeria's First Lady, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, has harvested fresh vegetables from her home garden at the Presidential Villa in Abuja, renewing her campaign for home gardening as a practical way to improve food security and healthy living across the country.
According to reports, the First Lady visited the Villa's vegetable garden on Monday for another routine harvest under the Every Home A Garden initiative, a programme she launched to encourage families to cultivate vegetables within their homes regardless of available space.
The thriving garden produced a variety of fresh vegetables, including spinach, waterleaf and fluted pumpkin (ugu), demonstrating the sustainability of the project nearly two years after it was established within the Presidential Villa.
Following the harvest, Senator Tinubu distributed part of the fresh produce to members of her staff, using the opportunity to encourage kindness, generosity and community support through the sharing of food and other essential resources.
The initiative forms part of her broader advocacy for household farming, which she believes can help families reduce food expenses while improving access to nutritious meals amid rising food costs.
She has repeatedly encouraged Nigerians to utilise available spaces around their homes to grow vegetables for personal consumption.
The Villa garden was officially unveiled in July 2024 under the Renewed Hope Initiative and was introduced alongside the Every Home A Garden competition.
The programme seeks to inspire women and households across Nigeria to embrace backyard farming as a means of promoting food security and environmental sustainability.
At the launch of the initiative, the First Lady explained that the garden was intended to prove that even limited household spaces could be transformed into productive vegetable gardens capable of supplying fresh and healthy food throughout the year.
Over time, the garden has continued to flourish, producing crops such as spinach, waterleaf, bitter leaf, scent leaf, ewedu, okra and lemongrass.
The sustained harvests have been presented as evidence of the benefits of consistent home gardening and proper crop management.
Food security has remained a key focus of the First Lady's advocacy, with the Every Home A Garden initiative encouraging Nigerians to supplement household food supplies through small-scale cultivation while reducing dependence on market purchases.
The latest harvest comes as conversations around food affordability and agricultural productivity continue nationwide, with supporters of the initiative describing home gardening as one of several practical approaches families can adopt to improve nutrition and reduce household expenses.
By sharing vegetables harvested from her own garden with members of her staff, the First Lady also reinforced her message that home gardening is not only about food production but also about promoting generosity, healthy lifestyles and stronger community values.