1,000 ex-agitators to begin training in cassava factory soon

At least 1000 ex-agitators and delegates of the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP) will soon commence training at the 60-daily-metric-tonne Bayelsa Cassava Processing Factory the Project Management Consultant of the facility, Adebowale Ayoade, has said.

Speaking in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Ayoade explained that after the training, the ex-agitators would become outgrowers of cassava stems to feed the factory and in turn, boost the economy of the region as well as food security.

Ayoade, who described the facility as the biggest industrial starch plant in Nigeria and the second largest in sub-Saharan Africa, said trainees would receive theoretical and practical training on cassava cultivation, starch processing and management.

The project manager and the Interim Administrator, PAP, Col. Miland Dixon Dikio (retd), who was represented by his Special Assistant on Projects, Godwin Ekpo, recently inspected the multi-billion-naira factory, located at Ebedebiri, Sagabama, Bayelsa State.

He said the facility would buy all the cassava from the farms to be established by trained delegates adding that the training would be handled by resource persons certified by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA).

He said: “The factory can do 60,000 metric tonnes of industrial starch working at a single shift of 250 days in a year and what that translates to is that we need about 200,000 tonnes of cassava to feed it. We need to farm on 10, 000 hectares of land.”

Dikio had earlier explained that PAP settled for the Cassava Processing Factory to train ex-agitators on skills they required to boost food security in the Niger Delta and the country.