Governor Bassey Otu of Cross River State has emphasized his administration’s dedication to ensuring food security through robust agricultural initiatives. With tangible progress already evident, the governor aims to position the state as a key contributor to Nigeria’s food supply chain.
According to thenationonlineng.net, he said food security is critical on the administration’s agenda, adding for any sub-national or country to be independent, it must be able to feed its people.
Otu, who spoke with journalists in Calabar at the Calabar Carnival, said until exploration of oil in Nigeria, agriculture was a thriving sector. He said as the biggest employer of labour, agriculture is receiving serious attention in the state, noting ‘today, we are reaping the fruits of our labour.’
“Food security is one of the most serious points on our agenda. It’s one of the thematic areas we try to make sure we bring on board. For any sub-national or any country, to be independent, you must be able to feed your people.
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“And if you look at the momentum of agriculture, it was going well until exploration of oil. After that, agriculture went down. So, we gave it serious attention. And today, we are reaping the fruits of our labour.
“We are ready as a government to buy all their products. If they want, there is freedom. If they don’t want, they don’t have problem. But, we don’t want farmers to be stranded with whatever they have been able to produce or plant. We are ready to collect it, store it in a farm, and then sell it to people who want to buy.
“And if we check, the prices of food here are coming down because the availability is now almost sustainable. Our vision in that area is to feed Nigeria, not only Cross River State. But soon, we’ll be able to feed ourselves,” he added.
He noted that the special agro-programmes in the state were to ensure the state does well in agriculture, particularly in production of cassava, cocoa, maize and oil palm.
“We set up planning schemes to look at these. In cassava, we do have a 5,000 hectare cassava farm, which for now is a pilot scheme that will provide seeds and stems, which we are going to use.
‘‘And the next one we are moving to is 50,000 hectares. For the oil palm, we have got about 3.5 million oil palm seeds from NIFOR, and then we collaborated with oil palm growers which are in numbers to set up the most recent pilots.
“And in cocoa, we are trying to revamp the farms as we are into a public-private partnership to revamp all our cocoa farms. We have some of the biggest cocoa farms even though the cocoa produces are taken from here to stamp elsewhere, which of course is going to change soon,” he said.
Commenting on the state of the economy and government’s decision to float the naira, Otu said the pains Nigerians go through are necessary sacrifice for a better tomorrow.
“The pain we are going through now is to see if we can carry all our people on board. But, for sacrifice, there must be that sacrifice. If not so, we cannot make progress. But it is left for managers of economy and government to be serious about it,” he said.
According to him, the nation’s economy has suffered because there were too many briefcase billionaires not adding value to the economy by way of investment.
“Most of these nations enjoying today passed through the same situation we are passing through today.
‘‘If the measures we took now were carried out when we didn’t have COVID or when things were okay, the pains would not have been this much. It’s just that ours is coming at a terrible time when the world is passing through some difficult transitions. But, we believe at the darkest end of the tunnel, what we are beginning to see is, even though the inflation is resisting, all other indices are showing that something positive is happening in the economy,” he added.
The governor also said plans were underway to upgrade tourism sites to meet international standards. This, he said, is to attract local and international tourists to the state.
He said the state would create the infrastructure to boost tourism in transportation and accommodation, etc.
“We are training personnel in the state and outside the country to upgrade our tourism sites. We are partnering investors to bring some of them to 21st-century standards.
“We are trying to ensure our roads are taken care of. We are not waiting on Federal Government because it has become clear priorities are too many, so we have to help ourselves.
“We want to ensure people access those tourism sites with little difficulty and we are looking at stabilising our product pricing by making sure transportation is improved. We will explore gas, electricity and trains. We are going to improve aviation …” he said.
