Ebonyi to partner with 50,000 farmers ‘to eradicate hunger’

The Ebonyi state government says it will partner with over 50,000 farmers to boost agriculture and the state’s internally generated revenue (IGR) before the end of the year.

David Umahi, governor of the state, said this over the weekend when he received Zero Hunger Forum, an international group, in Abakaliki, the state capital.

He said apart from the farmers, 8,000 civil servants would benefit from FADAMA 3 programme, also an agricultural programme.

“IFAD injected over  N4 billion into the society by reason of empowering over 6,000  farmers,which of course we supported the farmers by way of standing in for them in their 50 percent equity contribution,” he said.

“Through direct funding, over 15,000 farmers were  funded directly by the state government. That is to me stomach infrastructure. So this year,we are targeting over 50,000 farmers to partner with and to see how we can begin to eradicate hunger in Ebonyi state.

“We want to marry them together and we have started the process of borrowing N1 billion from the banks and then to use it to pay the counterpart funding of FADAMA 3 of our civil servants.

“So we are targeting 8,000 civil servants that will benefit from this N1 billion in a way of counterpart funding on FADAMA 3 programmes.

“Our idea is that our civil servants who are interested should be able to go to work on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays and on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, they should go to farm and then be able to work through this programme.”