Cross River State government has Rice, Cocoa and Poultry as priority products in agro value chain development, Project Coordinator, Agro-Processing, Productivity Enhancement and Livelihood Improvement Support (APPEALS), Dr. Marcel Agim, said yesterday.
Agim made this known at a media parley yesterday, with the theme: “Accurate Information: Recipe for Robust Relationship/Successful Project Branding”.
He explained that Agro-Processing, Productivity Enhancement and Livelihood Improvement Support (APPEALS) has in the past five years empowered 7,700 Nigerians including women and youths in three priority value chains of rice, cocoa and poultry.
He noted that the project, which started in 2016 with six pilot states of Cross River, Enugu, Kaduna, Kano, Kogi and Lagos, was developed by Nigeria’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the World Bank.
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According to him, the main objective of the project is to enhance small and medium scale agric-businesses looking at priority value chains and interest of the state.
“Rice, Cocoa and Poultry are the three significant value chains for the state because there is a cocoa processing factory in Ikom, here in Calabar is the poultry processing factory called Calachika and the ultra-modern rice processing mill in Ogoja. So, APPEALS Project keyed into the interest of the state and that is what we are working with”.
The State Project Coordinator said the total number of beneficiaries also included beneficiaries of the sub-component targeted at women and youths as well as persons with disabilities.
He said that 5,969 farmers were organized into Commodity Interest Groups (CIG) or Cooperative Societies and provided with specific enhancements since these were already into some form of farming.
His words: “In Cross River State, we have more than 5,900 farmers as direct beneficiaries because our target is that if we hit 10 thousand direct beneficiaries these number would equally impact positively the lives of others, which are the indirect beneficiaries.”
“The other component is the Women and Youth Empowerment Programme where 1,700 beneficiaries including people with disabilities were assisted. In fact, Cross River has the highest, a total of 98 persons with disabilities captured in the programme, while other states have 85.”
“Approximately, we have empowered 7,700 beneficiaries in the state, which is about 77 percent. You would recall that when we called for applications some years back, thirty-three thousand people applied to be part of this project.
We had to rundown the selection process till we got 1,700 women and youths. That is the number we are working with like other states in the project.”
He hinted that the project besides empowering the beneficiaries, established a grievance redress mechanism to settle disputes within and between the interest groups to avoid litigations.
Other ventures undertaken in the project to assist the beneficiaries, he explained were the development of critical infrastructure such as 13.2 kilometres of rural roads and construction of 6 grid extension for the provision of electricity to 15 Aggregation and Processing Centres built to enhance processing of the produce.
On the major challenge of the project, he revealed that, none release of the 300 million naira counterpart fund from the state government and the devastation meted on the team following the 2020 ENDSARS protest.
Agim said the Media Parley was necessitated by the need for constant engagement with Stakeholders including the media to forestall unnecessary rumours and assumptions capable of generating grievances particularly now that the project is tilting towards closure.