Hope seems to rise for the stalled cassava revolution in Rivers State as the plant may soon be commissioned to open job gates for about 4,500 persons.
The plant known as the Rivers State Cassava Processing Plant is headquartered in Afam in Oyigbo local council area near Port Harcourt with satellite centres in all the 22 other local council areas of the state.
The plant was said to be almost complete by 2014 requiring power connection to the nearby power plant in Afam, only for it to be affected by the endless political crisis in the state to this moment. It is a partnership project between the state government and the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) expected to serve as the biggest cassava processing project in West Africa.
Now, Gov Nyesom Wike seems to want to actualize the novel project and on Thursday, May 28, 2020, went to inspect progress of completion. After this, he pointed out that the company when fully operational would employ 4,500 persons and it also boost agriculture in the state.
Read also: Rivers scales down budget by 48%, from N530.8Bn to N300.4Bn
He stated that the State Government has 70 percent equity share in the project which is in partnership with SPDC. “We are quite happy that this project which was initiated by the previous administration in 2012 and abandoned has come to the stage of completion. When we came on board and saw the usefulness of this project to our economy, we did not hesitate to release funds to complete it.
“As you can see, this project which is about 90 percent completed would have been commissioned this month if not for the COVID-19 pandemic which has negatively impacted global economy.
“Let me commend the management of this plant for fast-tracking the completion and the novel initiative that will use mobile machines to collect cassava from the farmers at their various clusters.
“This, will no doubt, reduce the challenge of logistics and increase farmer participation, ” the governor stated.
Earlier, the Managing Director of the Rivers State Cassava Processing Company, Ruben Giesen, noted that the cassava processing plant when completed would increase income for small-holder farmers by providing an enabling environment for them to sell their cassava tubers.
He also disclosed that the plant would produce about 45,000 metric tons of cassava flour daily while about 12,000 metric tons of cassava tubers would be needed for collection by its mobile plants from farmers around the state for processing.
Giesen commended the State Governor for embarking on the project, which he described as the first of its kind in sub-Saharan Africa.
