Wole Mosadomi
15 September 2008
NIGER state government has entered into dialogue with the Egyptian government towards improving irrigation with emphasis on rice production in the state both for local consumption and export.
Consequently, the state government has also signed an agreement with a Chinese company to acquire the Badeggi rice milling plants towards refining the local rice to meet with the quality of imported ones.
The State Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, Alhaji Jibrin Danwake who made this known while addressing Journalists in Minna, Niger State said the state is the largest rice producing area in the country and that all it intends to do now is to boost the production and refine it to meet the standard of the imported ones.
He said besides the rice production, the state government has also procured 220 tractors that are being hired out to farmers throughout the state at highly subsidized rates to boost food production.
Alhaji Danwake while answering questions denied the allegation leveled against the state government of selling the procured fertilizers to only PDP card carrying members alone at subsidized rate.
He said the state government procured 35,700 metric tones of assorted fertilizers this year and in order to get to the genuine farmers, each of the 274 wards in the state were allocated 1000 bags for sale in their wards.
"The present administration is aggressively pursuing its agricultural policy with all seriousness and cannot politicize food production, the commissioner explained.
Alhaji Danwake explained that the metric tons of fertilizer procured by the state government cannot certainly satisfy all farmers in the state saying "individuals like the government can also procured and sell in the open market and it is this high rate sales that peoples now link to government own prices as high".
He said government prices of fertilizer still remains at between N1500 to N1700 for all brands of the commodity while the open market sale is between N3000 - N5000 per bag adding that government has no power to control the sale of the commodity as being sold in the open market by other business men.
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