By Adeoluwa Bravo
Governor Dapo Abiodun of Ogun State, yesterday flagged off the rice harvesting of 2020 Wet Season at Sowunmi Village, Mokoloki, Obafemi Owode Local Government.
The Rice was planted in March, 2020 at the onset of COVID-19 lock down, to begin the Wet Season Rice Production- an exercise which was described as part of Ogun State Initiative along with the Federal Government of Nigeria/International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) Value Chain Development Programme (VCDP).
In an exclusive investigation, newsclickng found that the rice production was efforts of farmers who had initially planted individually at Mokoloki, Obafemi- Owode, but had come together so as to benefit from the government support for land clearing, fertilizer and mechanize tools for growing and harvesting including training as claimed in a release by the State Government on Tuesday.
Efforts were made by newsclickng correspondent to determine the sponsoring party of the land clearing and harvesting machines, either by the Federal Government, State Government or International Bodies. It also remained unclear whether the State Government was receiving percentages from the proceeds made by the Mokoloki farmers.
The Commissioner for Agriculture in the State, Dr. Samson Odedina said he was busy with executive meeting and could not provide the needed information on the issue whether the State was raking percentages from the sales made by the farmers.
Further inquiries revealed that the rice production exercise was being replicated in 10 other rice producing local government areas of the state. About 9,000 hectares of rice farm had been cultivated at Igua area of Yewa North LGA, while similar capacity is being built in other LGAs.
Meanwhile, newsclickng gathered that the MITROS rice project by the Amosun-led administration was discontinued in the current administration, though it was claimed that the learning experiences of the “stone-infested MITROS” was the basis why the “government discontinued MITROS, for the newly mechanized initiative”.
