CBN’s timely universitybased poultry revival programme

Nigerians are highly elated to hear that the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele, has initiated the University-Based Poultry Revival Programme (UBPRP) as the University of Benin and Unigold Foods Limited signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to establish a 50 million per annum broiler/chicken production, processing and packaging poultry facility.

The MoU is a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) arrangement under the UBPRP, with optimism to reverse the trend of smuggling and importation of poultry products into the country and to encourage poultry products exporting giant, which Unigold Foods Ltd is also one of the nation’s foremost food and livestock company that could achieve this lofty dream by 2030.

This is because UBPRP will encourage high-level private sector participation, the attraction of investors, job creation, and prevention of capital flight and will add value to the poultry industry, which already, Uniben and Unigold Foods Ltd have keyed into the programme. We only hope that it will expand to other universities across the country, and Nigeria will emerge Africa’s poultry products hubby by 2030.

The Vice-Chancellor of Uniben, Prof Lilian Salami, we are told, had said the university is elated with the collaboration and MoU signed with Unigold Foods Ltd, which has led to the creation of a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) company called United Poultry And Food Company Nigeria Ltd. It will be a national company that will play a key role in the agro-based business space, which apart from being a profitable business will facilitate job creation for staff, students, and thousands of youths in Edo State because it will bring about human capacity development in terms of skill acquisition in the poultry industry including other opportunities.

The establishment of the United Poultry and Food Company Nigeria Ltd as contained in the MoU is to be a fully functional vertical integrated poultry production company that will be at full operating capacity by 2022 with an annual output of 50 million broilers.

Nigeria’s poultry industry is not competitive and is too expensive, hence the reason why consumers buy smuggled poultry, which is cheaper. But “with the coming of this project and also keying into CBN’s poultry initiatives under the University-Based Poultry Programme, in less than five years the issue of smuggling poultry products into Nigeria, which has been happening since 2003 will become a thing of the past”.

Nsikak Udom wrote from Benin, Edo State