By Paul Nwosu
Prof. Charles Chukwuma Soludo, CFR, will on Saturday, July 20 launch yet another agricultural revolution in Anambra State.
From 11am on that auspicious day, Mr. Governor will flag-off the distribution of 1,040,000 economic trees’ seedlings to Ndi-Anambra at Achebe Stadium, Fegge, Onitsha South Local Government Area.
The species of seedlings to be distributed include: Palm Oil – 700,000; Ukwa – 200,000; Oji Igbo – 50,000; Akilu, – 50,000; and Pawpaw – 40,000.
The feat is a major empowerment agenda of Governor Soludo to re-enact the Dr. Michael Iheonukara Okpara’s wealth and prosperity era of the Eastern Region of the 1960s. This was an era when these economic trees were the mainstay of wealth in Igbo land. The wealth-yielding trees were responsible for the meteoric growth of the economy of the Eastern Region at the time.
Governor Soludo does not mince words in his determination to continue the revolution from where Dr. Okpara stopped. Mr. Governor has remarkably said: “We are going back to where late M.I. Okpara stopped. He built Eastern Nigeria with money from palm oil. The cities of Onitsha with the Main Market, Enugu, Port Harcourt, Calabar, Aba and the rest were built with palm produce. They were well planned with pipe-borne water and electricity. But all these were abandoned with the discovery of crude oil and revenue from it. But there is enormous room to maximize our potentials in palm production. Malaysia came to Eastern Nigeria to collect samples of palm, but today their export of palm is far more than Nigeria is exporting in crude oil. Today, we go to Malaysia to get improved seedlings that mature between 4-5 years.”
The aim of this year’s distribution is to empower Ndi-Anambra so that more jobs and economic prosperity would be created, thus spinning forth a sustainable value chain that will buoy industrialization and commerce in Anambra State.
Governor Soludo initiated the agricultural masterplan from his first year in office. He immediately initiated an empowerment programme of giving people palm and coconut seedlings which they could start harvesting and making money in a maximum period of five years.
The Soludo Solution plan is such that a household that gets about 30 or 40 seedlings would be moved out of poverty permanently. Government wants to plant a minimum of one million seedlings every year for the next 10 years, and if this is achieved it will give Anambra State more revenue than FAAC and IGR. This will become a major game-changer in terms of diversification of sources of foregn exchange in the state.
Agriculture remains a bedrock of Mr. Governor’s promise of adopting disruptive changes that will put Anambra State on the long-term path of sustainable transformation as embodied in _“Soludo Solution: A People’s Manifesto.”_ The cash crop revolution programme in the state is indeed an idea whose time has come.
Governor Soludo is strongly advising the beneficiaries of the distribution of seedlings to actually plant and nurture them for that is the only way their families can reap the benefits of the humongous economic empowerment. Selling the seedlings for immediate profit will of course defeat the purpose as the meagre proceeds would be spent almost immediately. But when these seedlings are planted and nurtured they will eventually provide steady income for the beneficiary families and their manifold homesteads.
The landmark distribution of assorted seedlings of oil-palm, ukwa, oji-Igbo, akilu, and pawpaw will obviously turn Anambra State into an agricultural paradise.
Any community that abandons the vast gains of the traditional economy of agriculture runs the grave risk of going into extinction. It is thus incumbent on the teeming beneficiary families to continue expanding their frontiers to maximize the opportunities provided by the government through the massive distribution of oil-palm, ukwa, oji-Igbo, akilu, and pawpaw seedlings.
The good old days of agricultural boom as envisioned by Dr M.I. Okpara of the then Eastern Region are back through the indefatigable propping of the Solution Governor of Anambra State. Back then, the Eastern Region was on global record as the fastest growing economy in the world.
It is indeed a worthy feat of home-grown economic prosperity that Governor Soludo is re-enacting in Anambra State.
Sir PAUL NWOSU
Commissioner for Information,
Anambra State