By Frank Momoh
The Minister of Agriculture, Alh. Muhammad Nanono, has advised stakeholders in the federal government Emergency Agricultural Programme in the Niger Delta region and the different geopolitical zones to streamline their projects and focus on areas of comparative advantage.
According to him, some areas are better and more climatically favoured in fishing, Cocoa and Cassava for instance.
The Minister gave the advice when the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Niger Delta Senator Ita Enang who is the coordinator of the prgramme led the team of stakeholders on a courtesy visit to the minister during the week.
The visit, according to Mr. Edet Ekpeyong, in a statement, said is aimed at strengthening existing partnership and also solicit for the projects to be integrated into the ministry programme for funding.
He added that the ministry will assist in the provision of seedlings, land clearing and other technical assistance like soil mapping to ensure the success of the programme.
Nanono, said that the ministry will work with relevant stakeholders to resuscitate the Ebughu fishing terminal in Mbo, Akwa Ibom State,
In a remark, Enang said that the meeting was to enlist the support of the ministry to persuade the financing institutions to lower and liberalize the loans conditions to allow access to funds by more practicing and practical farmers on the field.
He said: “As at today, it is more of portfolios farmers who are able to properly documents their companies that are accessing the facilities.
“It would be better to risk few naira than to get to a position of national food scarcity that may necessitate emergency food imports to feed our citizens and sustain production chain of feed such as the current maize situation.”
“On the fish protein value chain, we are requesting that steps be expedited in activating terminals encouraging our team and investors who are building trawlers and training Nigerians on deep sea fishing for prawns and shrimps and other deep sea species.” He added.
He also noted that much of the prawns processed in Europe for Africa and other international markets are from Nigerian territorial waters and Gulf of Guinea.”
“To expedite the emergency Agricultural programme taking advantage of the agricultural farming seasons, we pray that your ministry does provide some inputs for rice, cassava maize, oil palm etc as grant for the farmers. While the farmers are approaching the financial institutions for other aids for the farms.” he added.