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I thank God today hearing a news about rice product from kogi state. The Confluence Rice.
The country today is entering a new face of development where agriculture is set to be the driver. So It’s a good thing that Governor Yahya Bello has keyed in to this goal and I sincerely thank him for this. However, I wish to share very my opinion on this.
Recently, we have witnessed few states becoming giants in the rice business, Lagos, Kebbi, Ebonyi, Anambra, Kano and Ogun who joined last week. So when you see your state in such direction, it create some sense of liberty, at least governance is taking a direction. That’s is why as a business teacher we must guide our government head on.
Producing rice in commercial quantity in kogi state should be secondary, going by our present state of mind, the faming population, what we grow, what we have competitive advantage should be what government should drive in. If you check the sensitivity of our state compared to the other states I have mentioned above, we do not share similar farming attitude, for example, there is little or no place where dry season farming is taking place in kogi state. So we must strategise as we wish to ease the sufferings of our people.
I was particularly happy with the chief of staff who pointed out palm plantation in Ofu LG. I am happy to be from that local govt., yes there is a plantation, a whole lot of it. Infact my Village, Okabo, is known for it and yearly when I was a kid, I remembered vividly that there is a yearly feast of harvesting the palm for the king and things like that. But I also know that these palm trees are owned by different people. So I am wondering how government is planning to liaise with the owners and create the massive job of over 20,000 as said by the Edward Onoja. But I would be happy to see this happen even though I have my doubts.
One area I thing we can exploit very cheaply is to expand our cashew plantation, kogi is internationally recognized as a cashew producing state, the igala land is very popular because of this product. Kogi is competing along side Ivory coast and Brazil as the leaders in cashew business globally. So I think this should become our primary product instead of rice. Cashew is very simple to plant and maintain, govt if serious should navigate towards capacity building, partnership with international bodies who are ready and are always patronising the state for this product to empower our youths and aged farmers towards cashew plantation. By so doing, the verse uncultivated land withing the state would be Put to use viably. When this is done, in the next three to four years, kogi would become the largest supplier of cashew in the world. The market for this product is ever increasing so there is no fear whatsoever on what the outcome would be.
I think going into rice because it’s the in thing would just be to band wagon. The sustainability of rice farming in kogi is questionable because of our farming culture. we can not compete with these other states to produce and marked rice but we can compete favourably with any country on cashew. So it’s very easy to take a direction if we are serious.
Currently, cashew employs over 100,000 people every season. That is a business we must think on how to do more because the advantages are limitless.
Let me however thank the Government for this noble idea and pray for directions from God to enable it succeeds.
Furthermore, I want to also commend the govt on the four months salaries paid to workers as reported. Even though there are claims that the payment was selective and even those paid ware in percentages, I hope those claims are false. Government should double it efforts to clear outstanding salaries of workers to ease the suffering of the entire workforce and their beneficiaries across the state.
God bless Nigeria, the people and Government of Kogi State.
– Salihu Adam Jiddah is a lecturer at the Federal University Kashere.
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