Enugu, NGO attract $20m for maize farming

Enugu State Ministry of Agriculture and the Initiative for Food Sufficient in Nigeria, a non-governmental organisation, have attracted $20 million from a United Nations humanitarian donor agency to invest in maize cultivation in the state.

According to Sylvester Okwosa, founder of Initiative for Food Sufficient in Nigeria, and a consultant to the Enugu Ministry of Agriculture, “the humanitarian agency agreed to start with a pilot project in Enugu before spreading to the whole of Nigeria, and to start they agreed to bring $20 million to warehouse in a bank for this pilot project.”

In an exclusive interview with BusinessDay, Okwosa said the state government had made available 1,4000 hectares of land to kick start the project at Agu-Ukehe in Igbo-Etiti Local Government Area of the state.

The project will engage for a start 10 co-operative societies from each of the 17 local government areas of the state, with a target to create job opportunities for the teaming youths and undergraduates through public private partnership (PPP) arrangement in commercialised agriculture in the state.

The decision of the state to go into commercial maize farming was as a study made on scarcity of poultry feeds and the increasing number of poultry farmers in the state that need the product as raw material for the formulation of the feeds, Okwosa said.

He further pointed out that the project was not only to create employment opportunities for the youths, but would also provide revenue and raw materials for livestock feeds, pointing out that “in the formulation of one ton of feed the quantity of maize involved is about 60 to70 percent.”

The maize farm will contain among other facilities self-contained accommodations for the farmers to avoid distraction, pivot centre irrigation, and the life span is for 30 years.

It will also have about five silos for harvest storage.

His words, “farmers will be comfortable because all the produce will be bought by the government and they will be happy with the price government will give them. The crops belong to the farmers; we will bring complete equipment and teach them how to use them.”