Kogi State Government has reacted to a publication in a national daily purporting that the 3000 hectares accelerated paddy rice production project embarked upon by the Idris Wada Administration is threatened by water shortage as water could not be accessed by rice irrigation farmers.
The Media Assistant to the Governor on Research and Documentation, Mr Ralph Agbana, noted that the publication titled ‘how irrigation farms dry off by River Niger bank in Kogi’, is rather mischievous and a deliberate attempt to mock the accelerated rice production initiative of His Excellency, Capt Idris Wada.
“Dry season farming has its challenges but they by no way are threatening the product as emphasised in that misinformed report. The neglect of areas where the project is making progress such as places where rice has started tussling to dwell on a negligible area of dryness due to imagined inadequate water pumps is a sort of embarrassment to the state government,” he said.
The Media aide further stated that while the year 2012 understandably was a devastating one for farmers in the state especially those that farmed along the basins of River Niger and River Benue due to the magnitude of flood that wiped farm crops and produce, the State Government under Capt Wada’s leadership reacted promptly by embarking upon the Cassava Value Chain Programme and Accelerated Rice Production, two basic components of the administration’s agricultural transformation agenda.
The latter therefore entails making use of all available land at the Niger River bank before the raining season sets in to boost rice production and make paddy rice available to the teeming population of the state to enhance food security.
The government in other to achieve success within the shortest possible time procured tractors to clear and till the land and subsequently allocated it to farmers and corporate bodies and others who were interested in rice production.
Kogi State Government’s efforts attracted the federal ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development which gave each farmer a 50 kg bag of NPK, a 50 kg bag of urea fertilizers and 1 fifty kg bag of rice.
“As a sign that Kogi is prepared for the rice revolution in Nigeria, so far, the state has embarked on clearing 6, 750 hectares in the state, Perhaps the largest done by any state in the federation. As at today, about 3000 hectares of land had been cleared, developed and over 80 per cent of it planted with rice.”
“It is gladdening though that the reporter quoted the state commissioner for Agriculture, Dr Femi Bolarin, albeit belatedly as disclosing that the Niger River Basin had donated a giant water pumping machine to pump water in addition to 60 pumping machines from the federal ministry of agriculture to the state government, which complemented that by buying additional pumps for irrigation projects. It is not right to say the accelerated rice production project is threatened by inadequacy of water when we have over 500 water pumping machines for 600 farmers working on the farm,” the Media aide added
