Govt. to create 20,000 jobs through agriculture

The Cross River Government says it will create more than 20,000 jobs through agriculture this year.

The state Commissioner for Agriculture, Prof. Anthony Eneji, made this known on Sunday in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Calabar.

He said that the jobs would be created through cocoa, palm oil, rice and robber production.

``We are bringing in improved cocoa hybrid that matures between 18 months and two years.

``We are going to distribute them to our farmers and give them the technical knowhow to raise them.

``Already we are raising oil palm seedlings in large numbers to support the ageing oil palm plantations in the various palm estates across the state,’’ said the commissioner.

Eneji said that the state government would start massive rice production, and had commenced the process of securing 10,000 hectares of land for the project.

``We are also into rice production already, with a large partnership coming from China with equipment and finance.

``In all, we are looking at creating not less than 20,000 jobs this year alone when all these programmes fully come on stream.

``It will even be more than that because it is going to be a value chain, starting from production, processing and marketing,” he said.

Eneji said that the state government had the plan to allow the people to drive the economy, adding that this will create an alternative source of revenue for the state.

He said that the state government was already resuscitating the rubber plantations in the state with the view to making them more productive.

The commissioner said that the state had plans to produce not less than 500,000 metric tons of cocoa yearly and be the highest cocoa producing state in the country.