12 October 2008
Those who had managed Sambo Farms included Dr Sani Abubakar Luggard (Wazirin Katsina) and now Secretary of Katsina Islamic Foundation (Proprietor of Katsina State University) in 1983. Luggard managed the farm on a contract basis for a year and a half, after the departure of its pioneer manager, one Mr Greemshow, a Briton, who nursed the farm to maturity.
Alhaji Umaru Yar'adua, it was learnt, started partisan politics while still managing the farm. He was head of the youth wing of a farmers association, an underground political movement formed by the late Shehu Musa Yar'adua, upon the ban placed on him and others by former President Ibrahim Babangida.
The farm continued to serve as an avenue for political meetings under the proxy chairmanship of Halliru Kafur (Hali Brothers). The farmers association metamorphosed into the Peoples Front (PF) and later the Social Democratic Party (SDP). Yar'adua, then a young farm manager, handled the mobilisation at Funtua axis. He was to later join Katsina State gubernatorial race under the banner of SDP, and later, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), where he eventually became the second civilian governor of Katsina state, to hold forth for eight years.
The farm, located at Unguwar Ali Village of Faskari Local Government, has over 1,600 hectares of arable land. It consists of mainly a poultry farm, an orchard with a thousand trees such as mango, orange, banana, apple and grape. It also has a fish pond, a cattle herd and horse pens. Farm infrastructures, such as the staff quarters, labour camps, administrative offices, stores, the hatchery, workshops and the bird houses, though dilapidated and empty, could still be seen standing in the farms. The workshops still house some torn documents and other broken tools and machines. There are 24 big poultry houses in each, with the capacity of, at least 15,000 birds, a cattle pens, horse houses and most sophisticated machines in the farm. There are about thirty strong containers serving as stores for the chicken feeds among others all of which have became moribund and lies fallow at the farms.
The farms, according to its one-time poultry manager, Mr Charles Okarafor, was set with the best machanisized and scientifically organised system of farming. There were machines for laying and processing broiler chickens. There was a barring stock where the eggs are kept to the hatchery. There were also incubators; a five and ten tonnes furrower feed mills and about eight modern tractors for tiling the remaining parts of the vast land areas. There were other machines, combined harvesters, cold room and freezers that store no less than 500 finished ones each. There were equally no less than two thousand permanent workers in the employ, apart from hundreds of labourers who worked on a casual basis. Most of the farm's workforces were people from neighbouring villages and each one of them earned between N200 and N300 monthly.
Okarafor has been on the farm as a poultry manager for 27 years. He still manages the bare land and looks after the left-over properties in the farm. He told Sunday Trust that the level of activities on the farm was unprecedented, as people worked round the clock and customers even slept at the farm to pick their deliveries of broiler chickens or eggs. His submission was corroborated by Hajiya Amina Abdullahi, an administrative worker on the farm in the early 1980s.
Amina, whose work was to record the number of birds processed and taken to the cold room, said at least 3,500 birds were processed and stored daily. She could not, however, recall the heap of crates of eggs processed every day, but she was sure there were tens of thousand crates.
"Every month, a group of whitemen came from abroad to inspect and advise on the farm. We were told they were consultants, and almost every week, broilers were imported from England and brought to Kano airport. I remember anytime they telephoned and said they were arriving, you will see trucks arraigned and sent to Kano to pick the chickens, and they brought them in tones. It took labourers hours before they unloaded the contents of those vehicles because of their numerical strength," she pointed.
Charles Okarafor, who still manages the fallow farm, also disclosed that though he was not in the account department, he guessed that the farm generated a lot as turnover from the sales and services it offered to various organizations; government establishments and the general public.
He narrated the situation to Sunday Trust, "when we processed broiler chickens, we put them in cold rooms ready for sale and any quantities required by the customers we supplied because we had them." Among the customers of the farm, he recalled were Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, educational institutions around Zaria; Uthman Danfodio University, Sokoto; Nanet foods; Leventis Store and Hotels, such as Hamdala, Durbar and Chiwoda. It was a modern poultry farm with impeccable food standard and nature right philosophy, he pointed.
Sambo Farms was not only the biggest but best poultry farm in the entire Northern Nigeria region. There was no company or organisation worth its name in the region that had no direct or indirect link with the farm for its supplies of broiler chickens and egg. Various state governments received their supplies from the farm in spite of the fact that there were sales outlets in Kaduna, Kano Sokoto, Katsina, Bauchi, Gongola (now Adamawa), Maiduguri and other major cities such as Zaria, Hadejia, Suleja and host of other areas.
A resident of Funtua, Garba Mustapha Haske, told this reporter that though he had never been to the farm at that time, he could recall how chickens and egg became abundant. He noted that there were packages of assorted parts sold everywhere at subsidized rates, while restaurant and food canteens competed in selling either the frozen roasted or fried chickens.
Isah Shema disclosed that, during the days of Sambo farms, all the people in the neighbouring villages had no problem with feeding. "Initially, the farm used to throw away assorted parts of chickens, such as head, legs, kidney and the intestines. We trooped out to gather them. Later, the management realized that it was a source of revenue and began to package them for sale. That also became a business venture from which a lot of persons made money. They would have them packaged and brought out in trucks. Women from Zamfara, Kano, Zaria and other places came to buy chicken parts. They chartered vehicles to convey them to their destinations for sale, some of them In fact, many people became rich through the sale chicken parts," he said.
The labour force on the farm was sourced from neighbouring villages of Sheme, Daudawa, Unguwar Samanja, Unguwar Ali, Kanon Haki, Kwaware A & B, Unguwar Haji. People from Funtua, Bakori,Faskari and Kankara worked as bricklayers, welders and administrators. There was a staff bus that conveyed them to and from Sambo Farms on a daily basis.
Checks revealed also that most of those neighbouring villagers are those benefiting from the vast land of the farm on lease for say N3,000 per hectare. Each leased out hectare consists of about 70 ridges, as the case may be. Mr Charles Okarafor said every season, he recorded names of those to whom the hectares were leased and the number allotted to them. On his own, he used a part of money to harvest maize, millet, sorghum and soya beans for his family consumption.
All the vast portions of over one thousand six hundred arable land where during the days of Yar'adua were concentrated on. The yield from maize farms was used as a feed mill of the birds. The cultivated maize was not usually enough for the birds. Therefore, more maize had to be sourced from the open market to compliment the yield from the farm.
Shehu Dahiru was called a slaughter king (Sarkin Yanka). In his Sheme village of Faskari local government, the name he earned during his working days at Sambo farms is still what he is called to date. He told Sunday Trust that he and one Mallam Adamu ran a shift duty and their job was mainly to slaughter chickens processed and stored in the cold room for sale. Shehu, whose shift duty everyday was from 8pm to 4pm daily said, he used to slaughter at least nine hundred to one thousand broiler chickens every day, while his colleague who, ran morning shift equally slaughtered at least two thousand daily. According to him, the number of chickens at the farm was just uncountable. He recalled that even customers who went there to buy chickens had to queue up for their supplies.
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