Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Alhaji Muhammad Nanono has stated that the agricultural mechanization programme of the federal government will kick-start in 632 local government areas in the country.
Nanono said this when he received the Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue state in Abuja at the weekend.
He said the policy would ensure that Nigeria achieves food security, job creation and economic growth, which is expected to involve a full technology package transfer that would cover all stages from agricultural production to industrial processing and marketing.
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The minister disclosed that each local government areas will have service centres and with each centre having a brand new tractor fully equipped with the administrative and IT workshop, while there would also be stores for seeds, fertilizer and excess produce.
“With these, we will link farmers up with processing industries, especially clusters at the local government producing the same thing will be provided with processing plants,’’ he added.
Nanono noted that the mechanization services would be driven by the people in the local government areas and urged Nigerians to come up with proposals of how to manage the service centres, as the federal government will guarantee the facilities.
He said that “the investment of potential manager of the service centres may not be more than N5million -N6 million, but they will own assets worth N150 million for a period of 15 years.
“A tractor that works for an estimated N 60, 000 -N75, 000 per day, can make income of about N30, 000-N40, 000 per day after expenses and with this the service centres can pay for the tractor in an average of six-seven years and note that the tractors can last for about 25 years.
“The loan we are getting can only finance 10, 000 tractors, the gap for improvement in terms of bridging the gap in agricultural mechanization is so huge. But, we hope that this will work very well so that the private sector can drive it.’’
The minister, who acknowledged the partnership of the Benue state government, noted that the ministry is really concerned about soya beans production, adding that Nigeria has enormous market potential for exporting soya beans to China.
In his remarks, Gov. Ortom assured the minister of the state’s commitment to partner with the ministry to ensure food security in Nigeria.
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