By Nosakhare Agbonigiarhuoyi
The Edo State Governor, Mr Godwin Obaseki has said that the new Agric Hub on Airport Road in Benin City will boost agricultural research and increase the productivity of farmers in the State.
Mr Obaseki announced this when he led the State Executive Council to inspect the state-of-the-art complex which will host a total of 118 offices, research centres, training facilities, workshops, farm mechanisation hubs, pig and poultry production prototype buildings, produce/soil laboratories, and many others.
The Governor told journalists that the hub signifies the Government’s efforts to upgrade its own infrastructure in order to improve its service delivery.
He said: “As you know, it’s part of rebuilding our institutions in Edo State, which is our priority because without the institutions working, the government cannot deliver better services to its people.
“We realised for the better part of 40 years, the government did not invest in its own infrastructure. So civil servants, and public servants, did not have space to even work. And that was not good at all for the morale and productivity of the civil service and the output of the government.
“We made a deliberate decision that we are going to invest in the infrastructure of the government.” Mr Obaseki said.
Explaining the MDAs that will be relocated to the hub upon its completion in May, he said “All the agencies related to agriculture, like the Ministry of Agriculture, the ADP, the forestry commission and the Edo State Oil Palm Programme, and all the other programs that we are running with multinational agencies, all government agencies in the Agric space will work together from here”.
On the impact of the increased research capacity of the hub on food security, the Governor highlighted the recently completed College of Agriculture in Iguorakhi, which is one of the three colleges earmarked (one in each senatorial district), adding that together, the facilities will provide the State with the avenue to test new technologies and innovations to increase productivity.
“It’s a total revamp of how we are approaching agriculture in Edo State. The important thing is to make sure you have the infrastructure that will now help the officers and workers to be productive. This is separate from the training facilities at the Colleges of Agriculture we are building across the state.
“We are upgrading all the experimental farms. So you’ve seen what we’ve done with the broiler section, what we are doing with the layer section, what we are doing with fisheries, as well as what we are doing with piggery. These are areas where the ministry will be testing new areas of research and doing some seed multiplication to help farmers across the state,” Governor Obaseki said.
