CROSS RIVER STATE TO MANUFACTURE MILITARY BISCUITS – AYADE
Emmanuel Alfred
Cross River State Governor, Sen Prof Ben Ayade on Tuesday announced that a production line for the manufacture of military biscuits has been completed and will soon commence production.
Ayade made this announcement while commissioning CSS’ food processing and packaging factory at Gora, near Abuja.
The Governor, who has sent over 3000 young persons from Cross River for training at the CSS Farms, admonished the latest batch of 150 trainees to concentrate on learning the latest techniques in agricultural production.
“We have set up factories. We have a massive biscuit line and we don’t want to use wheat flour; we want to go using fortified cassava flour to produce our biscuits. We will fortify our flour with special vitamin A and energy to have military biscuits. All of these call for backward integration and innovation and research. But this can only happen when you have the industrial platform to be able work and Cross Riverians will continue to come here to gain advanced knowledge and skill in modern farming techniques, bring back the knowledge to the state, grow our cash crops and raw material dependence, and then ship into the factories that will now process for export through the Bakassi deep sea port under the kinetics of the superhighway”.
The Governor also said agriculture and agro-industrialization hold the key to a prosperous future, adding that it was time for the country to fully return to agriculture, devoid of the usual primitivist mentality if the country must rise beyond her present economic quagmire.
He called on the federal government to take a facility tour of CSS farms in Gora, Nassarawa State to understudy its entire design, architecture and operations with a view to replicating same across the country.
Earlier, beneficiaries of the training, mostly youths, expressed gratitude to the Governor for what they termed a ‘life changing experience’, saying Ayade was empowering them to become next green millionaires.
