VON DG tasks Tinubu on reviving naira value

Mr Osita Okechukwu, the Director-General, Voice of Nigeria (VON) has tasked President Bola Tinubu to implement the Green Imperative Project (GIP), an agricultural mechanisation project, toward reviving the value of naira.

Okechukwu, also a foundation member of the All Progressives Congress (APC) said this in a statement on Thursday in Abuja.

“While commending Tinubu for the unification of the Foreign Exchange Market, I wish to advise him to urgently implement the Green Imperative Project (GIP), an agricultural mechanisation project in-waiting.

“The GIP is a 995 million euro in-kind agricultural mechanisation equipment project initiated by ex-President Muhammadu Buhari in 2018 between Nigeria and Brazil.

“It is a government to government project aimed at acquisition of modern agricultural machineries and installation of agro-processing plants to upgrade smallholder and medium farmers in Nigeria,” he said.

Okechukwu said that with the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, countries like Nigeria with swats of arable lands can fill the void in the international food market left by Ukraine.

“Methinks GIP will play important role in Dollar supply to stem endless Naira crash, which will get worse if we depend only on Oil revenue,” he said.

Okechukwu harped on the vast opportunities to harvest from the GIP with approximate agricultural machinery of 10,000 units of tractors and 50,000 units of assorted farm implements to be assembled in Nigeria.

In addition, he said, GIP was designed to have 632 Tractor Service Centers and 142 Agro-Processing Plants, covering all the 774 Local Government Areas (LGAs) of Nigeria.

Okechukwu posited that most importantly, the management centers were designed to be managed by private operators.

“There will be also training centers designed to assist subsistence farmers to be self reliant and owners of the farm implements in the near future.

“One therefore call on Mr President to urgently jump start the GIP as a Hand-Gun to cushion the shock of endless naira crash and the attendant harm to the poor masses,” he said.