A governor’s love for agriculture

Like a locomotive on the upward swing, gradually but steadily, the wheel of governance gathers momentum in the Confluence State. At inception, critics of the Kogi State governor, Idris Ichalla Wada, made a Mince meat of his administration ,condemning it for non-performance. But 24 months after take off, the situation is different. Today, Wada evokes the image of the proverbial stone once rejected by the builders but which became the corner  stone.

Last year, the governor was invited to the World Economic Forum on Africa in Cape Town, South Africa, where he gave talks on the Alape Staple Crops Processing Zone, (SCPZ). He was the only Nigerian governor invited for the event and ceased the opportunity to explain the dynamics of his deliberate policy of revamping agriculture and making it the basic instrument of change and wealth creation in the Confluence state. Indeed, the Wada administration has taken several steps to revamp the ailing agricultural sector in the state. The list is impressive. The most recent is the flag-off of the harvest season for the Kogi State Accelerated Rice farms in Serikinoma, Kotonkarffe and Lokoja. In order to key into the Federal Government’s Transformation Agenda and rake in maximum benefits from the September 2012 flood experience in the state, the Wada administration converted the flood plains into large arable farms manned mainly by youths and cooperative societies in the state. Large sites running into tens of hectares were cleared by the Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources (MANR), and apportioned to the youths for farming.