Posted by Mr. Osita Okechukwu, a founding member of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has urged President Bola Tinubu to launch the Green Imperative Project, or GIP, an initiative to mechanize agriculture, immediately.
The Voice of Nigeria’s (VON) Director General, Okechukwu, offered the counsel while praising President Tinubu for bringing the Foreign Exchange Market together.
The GIP is a €995 million in-kind partnership between Nigeria and Brazil for agricultural mechanized equipment that was started by the former president Buhari in 2018.
It is a Government to Government programme designed to modernize Nigeria’s smallholder and medium farmers by installing agro-processing facilities and purchasing new agricultural technology.
Okechukwu argued that nations like Nigeria, who have vast tracts of fertile land, can replace the hole created by Ukraine in the global food market as a result of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
Okechukwu responded, “I think GIP will play a significant role in dollar supply to prevent the Naira crash, which will get worse if we rely just on Oil revenue.
Okechukwu continued to emphasize the enormous prospects to benefit from the GIP with about 10,000 Tractors and 50,000 other farm equipment to be assembled in Nigeria.
Additionally, he added, GIP is planned to have 142 agro-processing plants and 632 tractor service centers to cover all 774 local government areas in Nigeria.
The management centers are intended to be run by private operators, according to Okechukwu.
Additionally, training facilities will be established to help subsistence farmers become independent and owners of farm equipment in the near future.
“One, therefore, calls upon Mr. President to urgently jump start the GIP as a Hand-Gun to cushion the shock of endless Naira Crash and the attendant harm to the poor masses.”