Wife of the President, Mrs Aisha Buhari (5th left), First Lady of Republic of Turkey, Mrs Amine Erdogan (4th right), Wife of Vice President, Mrs Dolapo Osinbajo (4th left) and wives of some state governors’ and members of Turkish delegation, during Mrs Erdogan’s visit to the Presidential Villa, Abuja, yesterday.
The Rivers State Government says it has no plan to privatise the Rivers State Songhai Farm project at Bunu Tai in Tai Local Government Area.
Executive Director/Chief Executive Officer of the Rivers State Sustainable Development Agency, Mr Larry Pepple who disclosed this in Port Harcourt on Wednesday while answering questions from members of the Editorial Board of the Rivers State Newspaper Corporation in Port Harcourt, said that privatising the farm would lead to job losses.
He said that the agency has trained competent hands to manage the farm, adding privatising it would lead to the owners laying them off and using only two or three staff to do the entire job in the farm.
Mr Pepple said that the Rivers Songhai Farm was already running at full steam while efforts were on to repopulate broilers birds to 20,000 and layers to 30,000.
He said that the farm was being connected to the national grid to reduce its dependence on biogas, adding that the farm would continue to serve as a regional centre for agricultural training.
Meanwhile, Mr Pepple says the RSSDA was not in competition with any ministry, department or agency.
He said that the agency was designed as a clearing house for all development activities in Rivers State, adding that the main component is targeted at human capacity development, agric and other services as well as skills acquisition programmes.
The RSSDA boss solicited the support of the Rivers State Newspaper Corporation in publicizing the activities of the agency.