Each time Clever Amada, a rice farmer in Bayelsa State, needs to use the mill, he travels to neighbouring Delta State, and sometimes as far as Ebonyi, to use private mills.
That would not have been his fate had the plan by the Muhammadu Buhari administration in 2016 to set up 40 parboiled rice processing plants been executed. But the $326 million project did not see the light of day because China’s Exim Bank, which was to be the major funder, never released the loan for the project.
“In Bayelsa, we don’t have a standard mill,” said Mr Amada, who is also the secretary of Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria (RIFAN) in Bayelsa.
“In Rivers State, there is no standard mill. In Akwa Ibom, I don’t know but from my conversation with colleagues, Akwa Ibom doesn’t have a standard mill as well, and also Calabar (Cross River). So in the whole of the South-south region, there is no standard rice milling plant.”
