Rivers State Inaugurate Cassava Plant

Rivers State Cassava Processing Company, located in Afam, the local government area of ​​Oyigbo, is about to enter production. Governor Nyesom Wike said on Thursday after inspecting the factory that he pointed out that the company will employ 4,500 employees when it is fully operational and will also promote the development of agriculture in the state. He said that the state government, in cooperation with Nigeria ’s Shell Petroleum Development Corporation (SPDC), has a 70% stake in the project.

The governor said: “There is no doubt that this will reduce logistics challenges and increase farmers’ participation.”

Earlier, Rubens Giesen, general manager of Rivers Cassava Processing Company, pointed out that the completion of the cassava processing plant would provide small farmers with a favorable environment for selling cassava tubers, thereby increasing their income.

He also revealed that the plant will produce about 45,000 tons of cassava flour every day, while the mobile factory needs to collect about 12,000 tons of cassava tubers from farmers across the state for processing.

“We are very pleased that this project initiated and abandoned by the previous government in 2012 has been completed.

“When we join and see that the project is useful to our economy, we will not hesitate to release funds to complete the project.

\”As you can see, if there is no negative impact on the global economy due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this project, which has been completed about 90%, will be put into use this month.

“I commend the factory ’s management staff for being able to quickly track completion and come up with a novel initiative that will use mobile machines to collect cassava from different clusters of farmers.

Mr. Gieson praised the Governor for launching the project, which he called the first such project in sub-Saharan Africa.

Paulinus Nsirim 

Commissioner for Information and Communications