Laleye Dipo in Minna
President Bola Tinubu will tomorrow launch the agro-processing zone in Minna, Niger State and the Minna Airport.
During the visit, the president will also inaugurate some farming equipment acquired by Governor Mohammed Umaru Bago.
The governor who inspected both projects ahead of the President’s visit declared that the airport terminal was 99% completed.
Bago said the 5,000 pieces of agricultural equipment that the president will inaugurate have also been delivered.
The governor told newsmen after the inspection of the projects “We are very well prepared to receive Mr. President. The terminal is 99 per cent completed and the assembling of the machines is ongoing” adding that “So far so good, we are sure that before Mr. President comes here a very significant number of these tractors would have been fully assembled”
On the Airport City Free Zone, Governor Bago that 2,000 hectares of land have been cleared already for the cultivation of fresh vegetables, fruits, and other dairy products for exportation, adding that the special agro-processing zone in the state will be the largest in Africa.
He submitted that Niger State sells 500,000 cattle weekly, adding that the agro-processing zone would allow easy exportation of frozen beef instead of live cattle and also create value-chain as well as employment.
He disclosed that the 2,000 hectares would be expanded to 10,000 hectares of land for further agricultural activities in the Airport Free Zone, pointing out that 140km length of water irrigation will be drawn to the Special Agro-processing Free Zone from Shiroro dam.
“We are constructing about 140 kilometers of water irrigation to this place from Shiroro dam and these are our partners and the people that we are partnering with from outside this country. You can see that they are ready for work.
“This project is an ambitious 50-year programme, but the first phase will be finished in the next few years so that Mr. President can commission it. We are bringing in 80 Megawatts of power to this airport. We are going to attract all of our investments to Niger State. There will be a power holiday for industries that want to set up here.
“We can give them free energy because we are housing four hydropower dams in Niger State and we subsidised 60 per cent of the power consumed in Nigeria and we are asking for 13.5 percent derivation from the Federal government.
“We are generating so that our people can benefit from what we are doing. Since 1960 when Nigeria got independence, Niger State has not benefited from these hydro dams. People are displaced. Our farmland is washed with excess overflow from the dams.
“Niger State has strategically positioned itself now to become Nigeria’s water reservoir so that the overflow from all these dams and rivers can now be stored for irrigation and we plug them during the crisis.”
