Kogi State Governor, Idris Wada said his government is targeting fresh 10,000 jobs from rice and cassava processing plants to be established in the state.
Speaking in Lagos on Thursday, Wada said one of his cardinal transformation agenda was agricultural and infrastructural development, today, according to him, the state government has cleared over 2,000 hectares of land for cassava and rice planting adding that the government has concluded arrangement to establish a processing plants for cassava and rice being produced in the state.
He said by so doing over 10,000 new jobs are expected to be generated through the mean.
He said the go a result of tough stance of his administration on security has begun to yield fruits for the state violent -free state, the state government in the last two years have signed several memorandum of understanding with both local and foreign investors as part of efforts to industrialized Kogi state.
He said with between N150 million and N180 million internally generated revenue in 2012 before he assumed office, the state now generates over N500 million monthly with the hope of hitting N1 billion mark by the end of May this year.
He said though when he assumed office on May 2012, he inherited over bloated civil servants and that this really affected the lean purse of the state emphasizing that with the biometric scheme in place, many loop holes would be covered while excess fund recover in the process would be plunge into infrastructural development projects in the state.
Wada said government is also transforming Kogi cities under its urban renewal programme.
“Before we came to government, we knew that agriculture is a value chain driven mechanism and we remained focus on it as our main flagship programme for the state. Although we have embarked on major transformation of the state, we still believe that agriculture is the main pivot of the state”, he said
