By: Felix Ikpotor
A non-governmental organization, Rivers Civil Society Organizations has condemn in its totality the continuous lack of investment in agriculture by the Rivers State Government.
The state budgetary allocation for agriculture in year 2020 was forty billion naira but was later reviewed downwards to 16 billion naira because of the effect of COVID-19 pandemic on the economy.
RIVCSO in a statement by its State Chairman, Enefaa Georgewill said the condemnation have become necessary as the Governor Nyesom Wike led government has failed to improve on the previous agricultural program or all together create a new program since it’s inception in 2015.
He said: “As you are all aware, RIVCSO have been calling on the Rivers State Government to make heavy investment in the agricultural sector to ensure food security and employment generation. This state has scored very poorly on the unemployment survey carried out by the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics”.
“ For keen observers like us, the unemployment index didn’t come to us as a surprise. The Cassava Processing Company is more of a program sponsored by Shell and shouldn’t be ascribed as an investment of the Rivers State Government”.
Continuing, he the activist said, “World over, agriculture and it’s allied businesses is the major employer of labor. Experts in the sector have severally argued that a well thought out agricultural program can absorb over one million citizens in Rivers State”. RIVCSO urged the government to be more prudent on it’s agricultural spending in the 2021 budget to get the army of employed youths to be gainfully engaged and reduce the rate of insecurity in the state as there is a nexus between unemployment and insecurity.
The coalition also used the medium to call on the government to fix dilapidated sections of the Ministry of Agriculture in particular and the Rivers State Secretariat in general for workers who are working under extremely harsh conditions instead of using billions of naira to build or renovate the Assembly quarters for lawmakers in the State.
