By Nsan Ndoma-Neji, Calabar
The Cross River State government yesterday flagged-off the cassava value chain development policy to boost cassava cultivation, insisting that there is no home in Cross River that survives without making it’s meal from cassava.
The state governor, Senator Bassey Edet Otu stated that Cross River stands tall as far as the number one position of highest cassava producer in Nigeria, saying that a total of 1000 hectares of land had been earmarked for cassava production in the state.
Representing the state governor at the stakeholders consultative forum for cassava value chain draft implementation programme, which took place at Transcorp Hotel Calabar on Thursday, Secretary to State Government, SSG, Prof Anthony Owan Enoh, stressed that 90 per cent of people residing in the state are involved in cultivation and cassava processing, making it the highest staple food consumed in the state.
Governor Otu said, “No state in Nigeria can compare with Cross River in cassava production and our economy is dead without cassava, because it is the highest agricultural revenue earner for our people.”
Otu stated that there is no household in the state that survives without taking one form of cassava meal in a day, therefore, “we have to put our best foot forward in the cultivation, processing and marketing of cassava to make us self reliant and forget about our oil which has been taken away.”
The governor averred that the Policy Framework will teach cassava farmers ways to modernize traditional ways of cultivation and processing of the product to keep it ahead of other states.
According to him, “What we focus in the state is the people first and this draft policy will give our people opportunity to cultivate cassava extensively because we have enough land and through this we can contribute to the industrialisation of the country while emancipating our people financially and providing them employment.”
Earlier, the state Commissioner for Agriculture and Irrigation, Dr. Johnson Ebokpo, Jr. said that the Cassava Draft Policy is an important instrument that will get backings of the Cross River State House of Assembly to ensure that investors who thronged into the state benefit from investments in the cassava value chain.
Ebokpo said, “This comprehensive draft policy will prove a road map for the development of our agricultural value chain.”
He maintained that Cross River State is blessed with arable land that the people of the state can massively go into cultivation of cassava to turnaround the fortunes of the state.
