*Commissions Africa’s biggest hatchery in Kaduna
President Muhammadu Buhari has commissioned Olam Integrated Poultry Farm and Feeds Mill in Kaduna.
The President commissioned the mills, on Tuesday, as he enthused that the country was getting out of the most disturbing economic scenario.
The multi-billion naira poultry farm located at Chikpiri Gabas village, Gwagwada, in Kaduna State, is said to be one of the biggest hatchery and poultry feeds mills in Africa.
The President Buhari, who said the government would not rest until every Nigerian has access to affordable food, said investment such as the Olam farm and mill would spur the country’s economic growth.
“It is our belief that agriculture offers the most viable and all-encompassing option in an attempt to diversify our national economy and it is in this direction that we must first be able to feed ourselves from what we grow and grow what we eat before we can comfortably turn our attention to many of the key problems of our daily lives. The commissioning of this massive facility today is a living testimony to our claim that serious and lasting growth is taking place in our economy and that growth can only last if it begins at the grass roots.
“About six months ago, we announced that we are in a recession, we announced the recession ourselves and when the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) presented the true picture of the state of affairs, we accepted the reality and confronted it head on with courage and a few months down the road, the NBS told the cherry news that we are getting out of the heat of recession,’’ he said.
He said although the statistics were still fragile, there were more illusions that the country still need to work on to get that economic growth to a satisfactory level.
‘’We are happy to note and we believe that majority of Nigerians are happy that we are getting out of the most disturbing scenario of our economy,” Buhari said, adding that his government was slowly reducing rural urban drift and the country was beginning to witness reverse migration from the cities to the villages.
“Another achievement of our agricultural agenda is the crowding in of the private sector. Today we are in Kaduna, six weeks ago we were in Kebbi state. About four months ago we were in Kano and in the next few weeks we shall be in another state commissioning projects similar to this,’’ he said.
The Kaduna State Governor, Malam Nasir El-Rufai, said the Olam Integrated Poultry Farm and Feeds Mill was designed to produce 1.6 million day old chicks weekly and 360, 000 metric tons of animal feed annually.
He said, “In our quest to ensure food security and achieve economic diversification through agriculture, we decided to pull Olam into the state. Olam farms is the largest single foreign direct investment for decades in the state. It will create thousands of direct jobs and create hundreds of thousands of indirect jobs and create a ready source of day old chicks for small poultry farmers throughout northern Nigeria and beyond.’’
Mr. Kc Suresh, Managing Director for Grains, Olam International, said the new investment would help Nigeria meet its ever-growing demand for high quality animal protein.
