5 January 2009
The Lagos State rice for job programme is not all about creating job for the teeming unemployed youths in the state but to also stabilize the price of rice through increase production of the stable food in the state.
The consultant to the state government on the project, Dr. Oluwarotimi Fashola, disclosed this in an exclusive interview in Lagos during the week.
The programme which he described as the initiative of the state Governor, Mr. Raji Fashola, started last year . "The rudiment started last year before the food crises which means we already have this programme in place before the food crises, that was to create job for youths in Lagos and empower them, to develop two areas in the state for rice production."
"We can say that per capital consumption of each person in Lagos State is 32kg per head, which is almost comparable to what you have in Asia.
It is therefore important that we put in place a programme that will guarantee the price of that material and the stabilization of its production. If we have a production centre for rice, it will not only create the job, but price stabilization."
Dr. Fashola disclosed that with two farms in Itoga, Badagry and Itokin, Ikorodu local government areas of the state, "We have a total collection of 150 hectares which is equivalent to 150 people. That was not our initial target. Our initial target was to have 400 hectares, for 200 people that means two hectares per person. But we had to revisit that because we realise that a lot of the youth we have are novice when it comes to rice production and will not be able to handle two hectare each, so we had to scale down to one hectare per person.."
He explained that they had to revisit the issue of the number of hectares to be cultivated per person to one hectare per person instead of the initial plan of one person to two hectares.
"The other aspect was the issue of the land tenure system that gave us a little bit of constraints to go into the 400 hectare we initially planned. In Itoga we have completed the harvesting, and in Itokin, we are harvesting. We also have in place now a processing centre we would soon be completed."
He said that the beauty of the project is that it is from production to processing as the two centres have incorporated processing centres. "We have one processing centre in Ikoga and Ideno for the processing of rice from our farms. We know farmers make more money when they sell after processing than selling at paddy.So we have institutionalize a process where production continues to processing level."
On the funding, he said for now it is solely funded by the Lagos state government, "but like I told people, Lagos state government is ready to partner with investors on this project. Lagos state has been seen as a non agricultural state, so we need to start off to let people know that agriculture is possible in the state so as to bring in investors.We should not forget that Lagos state has rural areas which can be opened for agriculture.
On the end goal for the project' "it is going to be in two parts. We want to expand it to cover more ground and the second part is to bring in investors to come and do a commercialize rice farming for the state. So these two aims point towards one thing, we want to turn Lagos state into rice producing centre and centre of excellence in rice processing."One of our problems in rice production in Nigeria is processing, if we have good precessing centres and mill, our rice will compete favourably with foreign rice."
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2009 Vanguard. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
