Governor Babagana Umara Zulum talked about how Borno State is working hard to make sure there’s enough food for everyone and even have extra to sell to other places.
He mentioned that they’re planning to grow things like sesame, maize, and cassava, which are crops that can bring in money.
He said this while visiting the Koiri irrigation farm, which is one of the places where they’re testing out a new way of watering crops called drip irrigation.
The Koiri scheme covers about 20 hectares of land, which is quite a big area, and they’re hoping to grow 364 tons of maize and sesame in one season. They plan to do this three times a year, so that adds up to over 1,092 tons of crops annually.
Governor Zulum said they’re really focusing on using this new irrigation method to grow more food.
He mentioned that they want to make the Koiri scheme even bigger, expanding it to cover 300 hectares of land.
“We will subsequently change focus and invest our resources in irrigation farming or, rather, food production. I assure you that we will provide the political will needed to achieve food sufficiency,” Zulum said.
He thinks they should spread it out evenly across the three senatorial zones, with each zone getting 100 hectares. This means they need to find more land to use for farming.
Governor Zulum also talked about some equipment they already have for irrigation farming, which his predecessor, the person who was governor before him, bought.
“We need to expand our scope. We should identify bigger land; we can expand with another 100 hectares each in Borno Central, South and North.”
They have about 10,000 hectares worth of drip irrigation kits, which they plan to use after the rainy season this year. He hopes they can use these kits to farm at least 1,000 hectares of land.
During his visit to the Koiri scheme, Governor Zulum was joined by some important government officials, like the Secretary to the State Government, Hon. Bukar Tijjani, and the Commissioners for Agriculture and Natural Resources, Bawu Musami, Information and Internal Security, Professor Usman Tar, along with some other members of the agriculture team.
They were all there to see how things were going and to support the efforts to improve farming in Borno State.
