Re: 36 Jigawa communities lose farms to Chinese plantation
Your article that appeared on Thursday, 9th February, 2017 was not only mischievous but was a clear case of sponsored smear campaign against a noble course that is designed to stimulate the economic base of the state and improve the living condition of its people.
State chief executives are on constant pursuit of investors traveling far and wide in an attempt to showcase potential, but invariably coming up against more questions than they have answers for.
It is therefore baffling to find a situation where an investment that has the potential of not only creating a local state based economy, where hitherto there was none, but also create huge direct job openings and incidental and complementary service provision opportunities is castigated and maligned for no other reason than the fact that some disgruntled individuals have made unreasonable demands of the investor that have not been met.
It is even more intriguing when in an attempt to belittle the efforts of the state government in anchoring this investment, all kinds of infantile, illogical and out rightly dumb statements are posited, from claiming 36 villages will be evicted (there are only 10 settlements of 200 inhabitants and above in the catchment area and none of them is being moved) to sugar cane being exported to china to be processed and returned as sugar.
The GNL sugar project was conceived as far back as 2013 and land was granted to the company to develop a sugar plantation and the article rightly stated that the issue came up during the campaigns but at no time did anyone agree to jettison the project. The records are there to show that the present government gave a commitment to look into the issue and on assumption of office set up a committee to investigate and proffer recommendations. This led to a retreat of sorts comprising senior government officials led by the Deputy Governor, and representatives from about 8 major investments that involved large scale land which covers Agriculture and Solar power development. At the end of the exercise which was supported by the DFID sponsored Gems3 program, a comprehensive Land Acquisition and Resettlement Framework (LARF) was developed and adopted by the State Executive council as a ground norm for responsible agricultural investment that reflects international standards on large scale land acquisition.
The principal focus of LARF is to focus on sustained livelihood of affected land holders as opposed to monetary compensation which no matter how much will eventually be spent or mismanaged to the detriment of the beneficiary. The concept of an outgrower scheme involving farmers or landowners who are affected by the acquisition was embedded in the document and basically guarantees all affected farmers a long term stake in the investment by given them the opportunity to grow part of the crop requirement for the proposed industry.
For the Gagarawa project the GNL paid for 12,000 hectares of land based on the approved state compensation rates, but will give up 6,000 hectares for an outgrower program that will accommodate all the affected farmers in an intercropping arrangement that will enable them grow sugarcane to be bought by the factory at market rates and still grow a variety of cash or food crops utilizing the irrigation infrastructure that the GNL is putting in place.
The GNL project will produce 100,000 tons of refined white sugar expandable to 120,000 tonnes at full capacity which is twice the combined current production of Savannah, Sunti and Bacita Sugar plants effectively doubling the countries local sugar production and taking a huge leap in narrowing the consumption gap which now stands at 1.7 million tons per annum currently being met by refining imported brown sugar to the detriment of our farmers and depleting our foreign exchange reserves. The factory complex will also have a food seasoning production unit (Ajinomoto) as well as an organic fertilizer plant, a ceiling board and furniture factory utilizing cane chaff as well as a 17MW power generating facility with about 12MW excess fed to the National grid.
At today’s retail prices 120,000 tons of sugar translates to a turnover of N48 billion with the associated factories contributing at least N10 Billion more which in total is just shy of the state’s annual budget or 100 years’ worth of Gagarawa local government’s statutory subvention.
Apart from the farmers that will be absorbed into the outgrower intercropping scheme, close to 6,000 direct and permanent jobs will be created with another 6,000 seasonal temporary employment slots. This is not counting the incidental jobs that the inevitable service industries that will proliferate within the factory and estate complex will generate as well as the CSR activities of the investor for the development of the host community.
The LARF document expressly prohibits the displacement of any community of more than 200 inhabitants and over 10 of such communities will exist within the estate all of which will be provided access roads and a buffer zone of land to cater for their expansion for the next 30 years. The estate communities include Kanyu, Medu, Kore Balato, Dan Madai, Kore Sabuwa, Gayawar Mallam, Unguwar Liman, Janta, Inkai Fulani etc contrary to the blatant falsehood of the previous write up which included some of these same settlements as being displaced. All other smaller nomadic settlements will be resettled under clearly laid down conditions with adequate provision of health, education and grazing infrastructure in the new settlements after a coordinated and mutually agreed process.
GNL will provide comprehensive and modern irrigation infrastructure covering all 12,000 HA of land encompassing the main estate but also complementary irrigation to neighboring farms and settlements as part of its CSR policy. Water will be derived from underground aquifers, rain harvest using burrow pits and a pumping station that will pump supplementary water during the rainy season to a holding barrage from River Hantsu 18km away. It is estimated that this phase will be completed in about 30 months. This will effectively double the available irrigation capacity in the State since the Hadejia Valley project which has been ongoing since 1984 is still in stage 1 of phase 1 with an irrigated area of about 6,200 hectares. Factory construction will commence in Q3 2017 with the sugar production slated for November 2021. In-between this period, the sugar estate development will be concurrently expanded to coincide with test run and production in 2021.
Contrary to the claim by the journalist that they could not get this information, it has been part of the sensitization agenda and these and other issues were thoroughly discussed and explained by the Deputy Governor in a 40 minute interview with the Dutse correspondent of the Daily Trust in response to a questionnaire submitted by the paper.
The obvious insinuation of handing over land to a “Chinese man” is not lost on the State Government so it may be worth mentioning that GNL is part of the Lee Group of companies that has been involved in the Nigerian industrial sector since 1962, and to date have 41 factories in Nigeria employing over 28,000 people making them the largest private employer of labour in the country. What have the Nigerian critics of this project done for their people lately?
The Jigawa State Government is committed to the wellbeing of its people and the long term prosperity of the State anchored on the development of large scale investment in the only sector that it has a comparative advantage in.
Farouq wrote from the Jigawa State Investment Promotion Agency