Bornu Registers 18,000 Farmers for Rice Cultivation

Bornu State has registered 18,000 farmers to cultivate rice on 18,000 hectares of land in preparation for this year’s planting season.

The north-east war theatre is smattering to readjust to socio-economic activities after the military recently announced it had recovered all territories hitherto held by Boko Haram fighters.

The state Commissioner for Agriculture, Mohammed Dili, made the disclosure when he took reporters to the workshop, where newly acquired tractors, mills, threshers, planters and harvesters to facilitate rice planting were being kept.

Under the programme, each farmer is expected to cultivate an average of one hectare of land.

Farming output was drastically reduced following the north east insurgency that disrupted economic activities in the region.

Dili said before the bloodlet unleashed on the state by the extremist group, Bornu had available 67,000 hectares of land in the Chad Basin Authority, the largest in West Africa, for the production of rice and wheat.

The basin was severely hampered by the crisis as farmers were displaced by Boko Haram bandits, who also burned farm settlements.

“People have suggested that Kebbi, Zamfara and Ebonyi are the largest rice producing states in the country but I beg to disagree because if not for the insurgency, there is no state in the federation, including the whole of West Africa that can produce rice better than this state”, Dili said.

Rice is cultivated in the three senatorial zones of the State. The main producing area are Marte, Mongonu, Kukawa, Kalabage and Ngala in the northern district. It is also grown in Jere, Maiduguri Municipal Centre and Konduga and in the southern district of Shani, Bayo, Biu, and Hawul.

Dili said before the insurgency, the state government in 2011 procured 31,000 tractors, 1,000 tractors, 1,600 planters, 50 harvesters and 600 rice mills. The combined number of harvesters nationally is 45.

“We also have some threshers, airbaler, combined harvesters and cultivators in preparation for our post insurgency programme. About 80 percent of our population is agriculture based. We make them to form corporative societies and to complete the entire value chain. We prepare the land, provide the machineries, cultivate the implements and the entire imputs that is required and at the end of the day we have a processing machine”.

He said the large implements are suitable for the state’s agro ecological conditions, adding the state placed in three ecological zones- the Guinea Savanna, the Sudan and Sahel Savannah- has its disposal machinery to cultivate 60,000 hectares of paddy rice.

Dili, also lauded the foresight of Governor Kashim Shettima, for procuring more than 10,000 farming unit of irrigation materials, brought into the state in 750 containers.