Sokoto State governor, Aminu Tambuwal, has revealed that the state has put modality in place to generate N250 billion from exportation of onions.
The governor, who stated this in Sokoto State on Sunday while briefing newsmen shortly after inspecting some of his legacy projects, added that the state has started the documentation of onions leaving the state.
He noted that several trailers loaded with onions leave the state on a daily basis, adding that it is only in the state that onions is produced all year round.
According to him, “We have started the process of documenting onions leaving the state. From what we have put in place, we will be generating nothing less than N250 billion to N300 billion annually. “We are the number one producer of onion in the North.
Onion in Sokoto is produced all year round.” Fielding questions from newsmen after the inspection of the Agricultural Store in Kasarawa, Wamakko Local Government Area of the state, the Sokoto State Commissioner for Agriculture, Prof. Aminu Abubakar, disclosed that 16,000 farmers will benefit from the state improved seeds and subsidised agricultural inputs to be distributed in 2022.
Abubakar listed the inputs to include water pumping machine for irrigation farming, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium (NPK) fertiliser, insecticides, herbicides, tomatoes paste processing machines, rice milling and processing machines, among others.
The improved seedlings, according to him, include rice, wheat and tomatoes. He noted that the subsidised inputs and seeds would be distributed across the 23 local government areas of the states to boost agricultural production.
“Recently we entered into collaboration with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on commercial agricultural scheme and that project consumed about four billion naira.
“What we have here are the materials that are going to be given to three crops that are going to be promoted across the state.
“The crops are 60 percent rice, 30 percent wheat and 10 percent tomatoes. These are done to help our complete value chain, that is from the farmers to up-takers and even to processors.
“The inputs supply are already in stock and list of benefiting farmers are already generated. Very soon, we are going to distribute this facilities to the farmers.
“You can see that Sokoto State has transformed into rice producing state and wheat has also followed suit. We are also going for tomatoes. So this is not all,” he said. Some of the inputs already stocked for the programmes include over 37,000 of 50kgs bags of NPK fertiliser, 1,500 pumping machines, over 30 milling machines, over 600 insecticides sprayers, while more are still expected.
Abubakar said that the state governor had been involved in several intervention programmes for the agricultural sector including subsisting fertilisers, giving loans and palliatives to farmers in order to boost agricultural production.
He recalled that last year the state government sold a bag of NPK fertiliser to farmers at a cost of N4,000, noting that the current price is about N12,000. “We sold urea at a cost of N5,500 and the cost of urea in the market is now N18,000.
“This subsidy cut across the 23 LGAs. No local government (area) is left out. The same thing is going to happen with this 16,000 farmers that are going to benefit from this project.
“We have three categories of these farmers. We have the large scale farmers, we have the medium scale farmers, and we have the small scale farmers.
These are going to constitute the 16,000 farmers.” Abubakar said that the state government had put in place measures to ensure that the farm inputs were not diverted, by setting up different committees in all the processes involved in the distribution.
He added that the state also had its commodity board to take up the produced commodities if the up-takers disappointed the farmers in buying over all their produce.
Ojelabi, the publisher of Freelanews, is an award winning and professionally trained mass communicator, who writes ruthlessly about pop culture, religion, politics and entertainment.
