Akwa Ibom State Governor, Udom Emmanuel, has embarked on an aggressive revamping of the Akwa oil palm plantation left moribund for over 30 years, writes Charles Ajunwa


Governor Udom Emmanuel of Akwa Ibom is using his private sector experience to drive aggressive economic reforms. Since assuming power in 2015, Udom, who inherited a civil service state, has brought his experience to bear on such sectors as housing, health, water, road, education, aviation, oil/gas, environment and agriculture.

The governor’s Midas touch accounted for the IGR increase from N15 billion to N30 billion monthly. Even with the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on global economies, the governor did not only muster the political will to start resuscitation the abandoned oil palm plantation. He mobilised funds to revamp the over 3,000 hectares of oil palm plantation, which past successive governments neglected. The oil palm plantation, which stretches across three local government areas: Uruefong Oruko, Mbo and Esit Eket, currently has 200,000 oil palm trees and a 300,000 capacity nursery for oil palm seedlings.


Entrusted with the responsibility of resuscitating the oil palm plantation is the state’s Commissioner for Lands and Water Resources, Pastor Umo Eno, who is deploying his private sector experience to drive the administration’s agenda of making Akwa Ibom a self-sustaining state.

Eno, executive director of Agricultural Investments, a directorate in Akwa Ibom State Investment Corporation (AKICORP), said the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) oil palm initiative informed the state government’s decision to revisit the abandoned oil palm plantation.


According to him, the oil palm plantation, which can employ over 500 workers during its active years, contributed 34 per cent of Nigeria’s palm oil export in the 1970s and 80s. The commissioner, who lamented the long neglect, said the late businessman MKO Abiola brought Malaysians who took palm oil seedlings from Akwa Palm. Malaysia today is ranked the second-largest producer of palm oil in the world after Indonesia.

“The managing director of NIFOR came here, saw Akwa Palm and cried,” Eno said.


There are plans to open up roads in the next six months, build new administrative blocks, and secure the entire oil palm plantation where the locals have encroached. At the last count during the inspection, the bulldozer deployed to the plantation had cleared 12 old roads covered by bushes. Eno also revealed that the Nigeria Institute For Oil-Palm Research (NIFOR) would provide Akwa Ibom seeds yielding two to three years.

“But what we have there still has a three-year life span to produce. So we can’t cut those trees down now. We have to prune them, get a proper mill; all the mills there were vandalised,” Eno added. On the viability of the oil palm plantation, the commissioner said the state had already received letters of intent from major companies such as Cadbury, PZ and others.


“Now, Cadbury has said they will buy from us. PZ too. The off-takers will come from within the country. But the mill within the country is difficult. Right now, I am communicating with a company in Portugal. They can give us a mill within a year. It will come with tank farms to produce and store the oil, and then you can distil,” Eno explained. “Now the CBN is prepared to loan us up to N10 billion. But you must show good faith. Now, the government has said revamp, and we are opening up all the roads. Now all the roads in Akwa Palm are open, and tractors are working there. Akwa Palm seats within three local governments. I am going to bring in 500,000 Tenera oil palm seedlings. Akwa palm will need 200,000 while 300,000 are for out-growers.”


According to the commissioner, the state government has finalised plans to engage the over 400 AKADEP staff and others to work as agric extension officers to improve productivity in the oil palm plantation. “When we do that, unemployment will be reduced. If anybody comes to tell you in Akwa Ibom your employment is this, you say no. These are people who will show statistically how you have engaged people because you cannot employ everybody into the civil service, you can create jobs and agriculture is the biggest employer of labour,” Eno added.

A youth leader in Etebi, Mfon Etang, who was part of the inspection, said the state government’s decision to revamp Akwa Palm, apart from attracting investments into the state, would create jobs for the teeming unemployed youths who are being lured into crimes because of idleness.

The oil palm plantation, said Etang, survived because the various communities constituted committees headed by village heads appointed agile youths to secure the Akwa Palm in the past 30 years.

He further disclosed: “The youths of our community are ready to join hands with the state government to ensure that this massive oil palm plantation bounces back to life. If it starts full operations again, most of the youths who presently don’t have anything to do would be gainfully employed, and they would be able to fend for their families.”

Commenting on the move by the Akwa Ibom government to resuscitate the palm, ex-lawmaker in the House of Representatives, Eseme Eyiboh, applauded the governor for having the political will and vision to revamp the palm which laid waste for over 30 years. Eyiboh said Akwa Palm was the most important source of income for the South-East region in the 1960s, with Akwa Ibom contributing 60 per cent.

In the early 1960s, when Nigeria was the world’s largest oil palm producer, the South-east region accounted for 90 per cent of the total output, with Akwa Ibom state alone contributing about 60 per cent, Eyiboh recalled that this led the World Bank to declare the region as the global fastest-growing regional economy in 1964.

However, with the advent of crude oil in Nigeria, the sector was relegated to the background. The hitherto busy substation of the Nigerian Institute for Oil Palm Research, NIFOR, in Abak that donated oil palm seedlings to Malaysia in 1960 became a shadow of itself.

He added, “Visitors from Malaysia were said to have collected oil palm seedlings and cross-pollinated them in Ikot Okpong, in the then south-eastern state. Today, Malaysia is the second-largest producer of oil palm in the world after Indonesia. Though Nigeria is ranked third in the world in terms of land area planted with oil palm, the country is only the fifth-largest palm oil producer in the world due to low yields. The reason for the low yields is not far-fetched.”

Nigeria’s oil palm cultivation is by small scale farmers, who grow oil palms with other crops instead of the industrial oil palm plantation approach practised by the “Asian Tigers and the Latin Americans.”

It is against this backdrop that the decision of the Akwa Ibom government to reactivate the moribund Akwa Palm Oil Plantation was made, he pointed out. The move is in response to repeated calls for states to identify one specific dominant crop in their locality and cultivate it in commercial quantities for local consumption and for export. The 3,000 hectares Akwa Palm Oil Plantation was established by the government of the then South-eastern state in 1962. It stretches across three local government areas of Esit Eket, Mbo and Uruefong Oruko.

Akwa Palm plantation had 500 staff in its workforce and contributed an estimated 34 per cent of Nigeria’s crude palm oil export in the 1970s and 80s. With 200,000 stands of palm trees and a 300,000 capacity nursery for oil palm seedlings, the plantation can produce thousands of tons of palm oil annually worth billions of naira.

Eyiboh, a former director at the Akwa Palm Industries Limited, said plans by the Akwa Ibom government to reactivate the plantation came at a time when the average price of a ton of palm oil has reached a decade high of $1,241.

“Current price of palm oil in Nigeria is about N100,000 ($758) per metric ton, while the current international price is $438 (N57,816) per metric ton,” he revealed. “Also, the COVID-19 restrictions have further increased global demand for palm oil. The fact that the local price of the commodity is skyrocketing every day is a clear demonstration that any investment in the sector is futuristic and worthwhile.”

Eyiboh also stated that the Udom administration should go beyond mere rhetoric and political pronouncements to ensure that the ongoing work at the oil palm plantation was completed in no distant future.

“Modern palm plantations, as seen in Southern Asian countries, are designed as a fully-integrated agro-industrial establishment, equipped with oil palm trees, palm oil mills, palm kernel extraction plant and vegetable oil refining and fractionation plants,” said Eyiboh. “The Akwa Palm should not fall short of this standard. Those handling the project should adopt strategies that will enable the company to obtain international certification as a member of the Global Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, RSPO. This will enable its products to compete favourably in the international market.”

When fully reactivated, Eyiboh believes the economic benefits of the Akwa plantation to the state in particular and the nation, in general, are enormous. The plantation will work in partnership with small scale oil palm farmers to address the current fluctuating trends in the production and marketing of palm oil in the state. “Furthermore,” he explained, “this investment will boost the state’s internally generated revenue, IGR, thereby reducing dependence on federation allocation.”

In economic terms, he further pointed out, oil palm has a long shelf life span, and it is used in more than 50 per cent of all the products sold in supermarkets. The diverse use of oil palm makes it versatile and capable of lifting millions of people out of poverty. In Asian countries, oil palm plantations have created millions of well-paying jobs and enabled tens of thousands of smallholder farmers to acquire their own land.

With enough political will, Akwa Ibom and Nigeria can achieve the same feat.

If palm oil is produced in commercial quantities in the state, it will encourage the springing up of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) where the commodity will be used to produce body care products such as soap, toothpaste, shampoo and other household cleaning agents.

“In the area of foreign exchange earnings, a steady increase in the local production of palm oil will promote export and reduce the amount of revenue used to import the item,” stated Eyiboh.

He disclosed that Nigeria spent about $500 million to import 600,000 tons of oil palm in 2016 alone.

“The amount doubled in 2017,” said Eyiboh. “This is a reverse of what obtains in Indonesia where the oil palm industry accounts for 1.6 per cent of the GDP, employs 4.5 million people and brings in more than $18 billion a year in foreign exchange. If the Akwa Palm is reactivated and made to work optimally, Akwa Ibom state will, in no distant future, become a designation centre for manufacturers who are looking for natural seed oils, like palm oil, as an alternative to unhealthy hydrogenated fats.”

The Akwa Palm should not be seen as a political gimmick to settle party supporters. But as a people-oriented scheme that should receive the support of all, irrespective of political or ethnic background, Eyiboh warned.

He urged the Akwa Ibom government to use the same level of zeal and commitment applied in executing the Ibom Air project to bring the Akwa palm reactivation to a reality.

“Just as Ibom Air has almost assumed the status of a national carrier, the Akwa Palm Plantation scheme, if well implemented, will equally become the cynosure of all eyes, attracting international recognition and generating income to many households,” he stated. “If states must survive in the post-COVID era, there should be a healthy competition among them, in investment in productive ventures that will diversify the economy away from crude oil.”

The reactivation of Akwa Palm Oil Plantation in Akwa Ibom is one of such investments expected to enhance the state’s economic fortunes and add the much-needed value to the national drive for non-oil exports.

According to Eyiboh, a federal agency like Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) should inject funds into projects like the Akwa Palm.

“An interventionist agency like NDDC bluntly refused to see the prospects in the prosperity of the people. If NDDC spent all the money they are wasting, if they had put one-quarter of that money into Akwa Palm, I’m sure that this place would have by now increased the state’s IGR and created employment for the teeming youths,”

https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2021/08/31/30-years-after-akwa-palm-set-to-become-multibillion-dollar-plantation/

Lalasticlala front page

There is a special joy you derive in agriculture especially when you sow and reap at the appropriate time without herdmens destruction..
I think people need to look more towards agriculture.
You don't even need to do things by yourself..
Just get a small farm house, contract people and you are good to go..

A long read

K

A goldmine yet to be tapped.
Mostly on the left going to Calabar from Ugep/Ikom

Crossroad1:
There is a special joy you derive in agriculture especially when you sow and reap at the appropriate time without herdmens destruction..
I think people need to look more towards agriculture.
You don't even need to do things by yourself..
Just get a small farm house, contract people and you are good to go..

Exactly bro

ogbuefi677:
A goldmine yet to be tapped.
Mostly on the left going to Calabar from Ugep/Ikom

Yeah…lalasticlala

Who will read that long lamentations

Blackfire:
Who will read that long lamentations

All of us except yoh .. I also think you are not fun of reading..

Delta State Government hope you are seeing what is happening here?

otokx:
Delta State Government hope you are seeing what is happening here?

Lol

NkanAkpanika:
Akwa Ibom State Governor, Udom Emmanuel, has embarked on an aggressive revamping of the Akwa oil palm plantation left moribund for over 30 years, writes Charles Ajunwa


Governor Udom Emmanuel of Akwa Ibom is using his private sector experience to drive aggressive economic reforms. Since assuming power in 2015, Udom, who inherited a civil service state, has brought his experience to bear on such sectors as housing, health, water, road, education, aviation, oil/gas, environment and agriculture.

The governor’s Midas touch accounted for the IGR increase from N15 billion to N30 billion monthly. Even with the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on global economies, the governor did not only muster the political will to start resuscitation the abandoned oil palm plantation. He mobilised funds to revamp the over 3,000 hectares of oil palm plantation, which past successive governments neglected. The oil palm plantation, which stretches across three local government areas: Uruefong Oruko, Mbo and Esit Eket, currently has 200,000 oil palm trees and a 300,000 capacity nursery for oil palm seedlings.


Entrusted with the responsibility of resuscitating the oil palm plantation is the state’s Commissioner for Lands and Water Resources, Pastor Umo Eno, who is deploying his private sector experience to drive the administration’s agenda of making Akwa Ibom a self-sustaining state.

Eno, executive director of Agricultural Investments, a directorate in Akwa Ibom State Investment Corporation (AKICORP), said the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) oil palm initiative informed the state government’s decision to revisit the abandoned oil palm plantation.


According to him, the oil palm plantation, which can employ over 500 workers during its active years, contributed 34 per cent of Nigeria’s palm oil export in the 1970s and 80s. The commissioner, who lamented the long neglect, said the late businessman MKO Abiola brought Malaysians who took palm oil seedlings from Akwa Palm. Malaysia today is ranked the second-largest producer of palm oil in the world after Indonesia.

“The managing director of NIFOR came here, saw Akwa Palm and cried,” Eno said.


There are plans to open up roads in the next six months, build new administrative blocks, and secure the entire oil palm plantation where the locals have encroached. At the last count during the inspection, the bulldozer deployed to the plantation had cleared 12 old roads covered by bushes. Eno also revealed that the Nigeria Institute For Oil-Palm Research (NIFOR) would provide Akwa Ibom seeds yielding two to three years.

“But what we have there still has a three-year life span to produce. So we can’t cut those trees down now. We have to prune them, get a proper mill; all the mills there were vandalised,” Eno added. On the viability of the oil palm plantation, the commissioner said the state had already received letters of intent from major companies such as Cadbury, PZ and others.


“Now, Cadbury has said they will buy from us. PZ too. The off-takers will come from within the country. But the mill within the country is difficult. Right now, I am communicating with a company in Portugal. They can give us a mill within a year. It will come with tank farms to produce and store the oil, and then you can distil,” Eno explained. “Now the CBN is prepared to loan us up to N10 billion. But you must show good faith. Now, the government has said revamp, and we are opening up all the roads. Now all the roads in Akwa Palm are open, and tractors are working there. Akwa Palm seats within three local governments. I am going to bring in 500,000 Tenera oil palm seedlings. Akwa palm will need 200,000 while 300,000 are for out-growers.”


According to the commissioner, the state government has finalised plans to engage the over 400 AKADEP staff and others to work as agric extension officers to improve productivity in the oil palm plantation. “When we do that, unemployment will be reduced. If anybody comes to tell you in Akwa Ibom your employment is this, you say no. These are people who will show statistically how you have engaged people because you cannot employ everybody into the civil service, you can create jobs and agriculture is the biggest employer of labour,” Eno added.

A youth leader in Etebi, Mfon Etang, who was part of the inspection, said the state government’s decision to revamp Akwa Palm, apart from attracting investments into the state, would create jobs for the teeming unemployed youths who are being lured into crimes because of idleness.

The oil palm plantation, said Etang, survived because the various communities constituted committees headed by village heads appointed agile youths to secure the Akwa Palm in the past 30 years.

He further disclosed: “The youths of our community are ready to join hands with the state government to ensure that this massive oil palm plantation bounces back to life. If it starts full operations again, most of the youths who presently don’t have anything to do would be gainfully employed, and they would be able to fend for their families.”

Commenting on the move by the Akwa Ibom government to resuscitate the palm, ex-lawmaker in the House of Representatives, Eseme Eyiboh, applauded the governor for having the political will and vision to revamp the palm which laid waste for over 30 years. Eyiboh said Akwa Palm was the most important source of income for the South-East region in the 1960s, with Akwa Ibom contributing 60 per cent.

In the early 1960s, when Nigeria was the world’s largest oil palm producer, the South-east region accounted for 90 per cent of the total output, with Akwa Ibom state alone contributing about 60 per cent, Eyiboh recalled that this led the World Bank to declare the region as the global fastest-growing regional economy in 1964.

However, with the advent of crude oil in Nigeria, the sector was relegated to the background. The hitherto busy substation of the Nigerian Institute for Oil Palm Research, NIFOR, in Abak that donated oil palm seedlings to Malaysia in 1960 became a shadow of itself.

He added, “Visitors from Malaysia were said to have collected oil palm seedlings and cross-pollinated them in Ikot Okpong, in the then south-eastern state. Today, Malaysia is the second-largest producer of oil palm in the world after Indonesia. Though Nigeria is ranked third in the world in terms of land area planted with oil palm, the country is only the fifth-largest palm oil producer in the world due to low yields. The reason for the low yields is not far-fetched.”

Nigeria’s oil palm cultivation is by small scale farmers, who grow oil palms with other crops instead of the industrial oil palm plantation approach practised by the “Asian Tigers and the Latin Americans.”

It is against this backdrop that the decision of the Akwa Ibom government to reactivate the moribund Akwa Palm Oil Plantation was made, he pointed out. The move is in response to repeated calls for states to identify one specific dominant crop in their locality and cultivate it in commercial quantities for local consumption and for export. The 3,000 hectares Akwa Palm Oil Plantation was established by the government of the then South-eastern state in 1962. It stretches across three local government areas of Esit Eket, Mbo and Uruefong Oruko.

Akwa Palm plantation had 500 staff in its workforce and contributed an estimated 34 per cent of Nigeria’s crude palm oil export in the 1970s and 80s. With 200,000 stands of palm trees and a 300,000 capacity nursery for oil palm seedlings, the plantation can produce thousands of tons of palm oil annually worth billions of naira.

Eyiboh, a former director at the Akwa Palm Industries Limited, said plans by the Akwa Ibom government to reactivate the plantation came at a time when the average price of a ton of palm oil has reached a decade high of $1,241.

“Current price of palm oil in Nigeria is about N100,000 ($758) per metric ton, while the current international price is $438 (N57,816) per metric ton,” he revealed. “Also, the COVID-19 restrictions have further increased global demand for palm oil. The fact that the local price of the commodity is skyrocketing every day is a clear demonstration that any investment in the sector is futuristic and worthwhile.”

Eyiboh also stated that the Udom administration should go beyond mere rhetoric and political pronouncements to ensure that the ongoing work at the oil palm plantation was completed in no distant future.

“Modern palm plantations, as seen in Southern Asian countries, are designed as a fully-integrated agro-industrial establishment, equipped with oil palm trees, palm oil mills, palm kernel extraction plant and vegetable oil refining and fractionation plants,” said Eyiboh. “The Akwa Palm should not fall short of this standard. Those handling the project should adopt strategies that will enable the company to obtain international certification as a member of the Global Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, RSPO. This will enable its products to compete favourably in the international market.”

When fully reactivated, Eyiboh believes the economic benefits of the Akwa plantation to the state in particular and the nation, in general, are enormous. The plantation will work in partnership with small scale oil palm farmers to address the current fluctuating trends in the production and marketing of palm oil in the state. “Furthermore,” he explained, “this investment will boost the state’s internally generated revenue, IGR, thereby reducing dependence on federation allocation.”

In economic terms, he further pointed out, oil palm has a long shelf life span, and it is used in more than 50 per cent of all the products sold in supermarkets. The diverse use of oil palm makes it versatile and capable of lifting millions of people out of poverty. In Asian countries, oil palm plantations have created millions of well-paying jobs and enabled tens of thousands of smallholder farmers to acquire their own land.

With enough political will, Akwa Ibom and Nigeria can achieve the same feat.

If palm oil is produced in commercial quantities in the state, it will encourage the springing up of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) where the commodity will be used to produce body care products such as soap, toothpaste, shampoo and other household cleaning agents.

“In the area of foreign exchange earnings, a steady increase in the local production of palm oil will promote export and reduce the amount of revenue used to import the item,” stated Eyiboh.

He disclosed that Nigeria spent about $500 million to import 600,000 tons of oil palm in 2016 alone.

“The amount doubled in 2017,” said Eyiboh. “This is a reverse of what obtains in Indonesia where the oil palm industry accounts for 1.6 per cent of the GDP, employs 4.5 million people and brings in more than $18 billion a year in foreign exchange. If the Akwa Palm is reactivated and made to work optimally, Akwa Ibom state will, in no distant future, become a designation centre for manufacturers who are looking for natural seed oils, like palm oil, as an alternative to unhealthy hydrogenated fats.”

The Akwa Palm should not be seen as a political gimmick to settle party supporters. But as a people-oriented scheme that should receive the support of all, irrespective of political or ethnic background, Eyiboh warned.

He urged the Akwa Ibom government to use the same level of zeal and commitment applied in executing the Ibom Air project to bring the Akwa palm reactivation to a reality.

“Just as Ibom Air has almost assumed the status of a national carrier, the Akwa Palm Plantation scheme, if well implemented, will equally become the cynosure of all eyes, attracting international recognition and generating income to many households,” he stated. “If states must survive in the post-COVID era, there should be a healthy competition among them, in investment in productive ventures that will diversify the economy away from crude oil.”

The reactivation of Akwa Palm Oil Plantation in Akwa Ibom is one of such investments expected to enhance the state’s economic fortunes and add the much-needed value to the national drive for non-oil exports.

According to Eyiboh, a federal agency like Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) should inject funds into projects like the Akwa Palm.

“An interventionist agency like NDDC bluntly refused to see the prospects in the prosperity of the people. If NDDC spent all the money they are wasting, if they had put one-quarter of that money into Akwa Palm, I’m sure that this place would have by now increased the state’s IGR and created employment for the teeming youths,”

https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2021/08/31/30-years-after-akwa-palm-set-to-become-multibillion-dollar-plantation/

Lalasticlala front page

Why does this tissue of lies deserve frontpage

It claims

Akwa Ibom has 30 billion IGR a month. An OBVIOUS Lie

The thread is called MULTI BILLION DOLLAR


Multi billion dollar indeed!
By the time you start to observe a newspaper attributing "Midas Touch" to a politician it is safe to conclude they are either paid or partisan

AkwaIbom has the highest oil deposits in the country.
And they are still the only state that is leading in diversifying their economy away from oil.
Ibom Air/AKTC
Ibom Deep sea port
Ibom palm plantation.
Ibom coconut plantation.
Ibom pencil and tooth pick industry.
Car assembly plants.
And many other medium scale industries that I don't know
Tourism etc.
Other states should wake up!

aribisala0:


Why does this tissue of lies deserve frontpage

It claims

Akwa Ibom has 30 billion IGR a month. An OBVIOUS Lie

The thread is called MULTI BILLION DOLLAR


Multi billion dollar indeed!
By the time you start to observe a newspaper attributing "Midas Touch" to a politician it is safe to conclude they are either paid or partisan

So what exactly is your issue with the report .. if you are paid pls kindly hug the next transformer ok

aribisala0:


Why does this tissue of lies deserve frontpage

It claims

Akwa Ibom has 30 billion IGR a month. An OBVIOUS Lie

The thread is called MULTI BILLION DOLLAR


Multi billion dollar indeed!
By the time you start to observe a newspaper attributing "Midas Touch" to a politician it is safe to conclude they are either paid or partisan

So what exactly is your issue with the report .. if you are paid pls kindly hug the next transformer

aribisala0:


Why does this tissue of lies deserve frontpage

It claims

Akwa Ibom has 30 billion IGR a month. An OBVIOUS Lie

The thread is called MULTI BILLION DOLLAR


Multi billion dollar indeed!
By the time you start to observe a newspaper attributing "Midas Touch" to a politician it is safe to conclude they are either paid or partisan

So what exactly is your issue with the report .. if you are paid pls kindly hug the next transformer ok

ThinkSmarter:
AkwaIbom has the highest oil deposits in the country.
And they are still the only state that is leading in diversifying their economy away from oil.
Ibom Air/AKTC
Ibom Deep sea port
Ibom palm plantation.
Ibom coconut plantation.
Ibom pencil and tooth pick industry.
Car assembly plants.
And many other medium scale industries that I don't know
Tourism etc.
Other states should wake up!

The only state with a progressive government