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… Warns It will Encourage Resource Control’
The dean of the School of Post Graduate Studies, Federal University, Otuoke, Bayelsa State, Prof Benjamin Okaba, has played down the purported embargo of food stuffs to the south by some northern groups, noting that there was no need for panic as the south/south and other parts of the country have potentials to feed themselves.
While reacting to the development in a chat with newsmen in Yenagoa recently, Okaba said it is deceptive for anybody to tout comparative advantage against others, in terms of food security, as God has blessed all parts of the country with food and cash crops and resources for food sufficiency, insisting that it is a fallacy to assume that the south will starve to death because of the alleged food blockade.
Okaba, who is one of the leading candidates for the office of national president of Ijaw National Congress, INC, called for a synergy among ministries of Agriculture and Natural Resources in the South/South region on how they can boost agricultural production, adding that they should see the development as an opportunity to rejig their agricultural processes so as to maximize the potentials that abound.
He said: “Rather than panic, I think this is an opportunity for us to do the needful. We have the population, we have the graduates that are not working, let the government open up farms and unemployment will be dealt with. The issues of youth restiveness and unemployment will be taken care of by this challenge.
“When they say necessity is the mother of invention, that means that when you are face with a situation like this, you should take it as a decent challenge and think of what you can do within and outside the box to grow our economy.
“I carried out a research wherein I stated before that the largest plantain and banana markets in Africa are found in Bayelsa State which is the Zarama Market. In terms of protein, Ijaws have the highest number of rivers and waterways in Africa, in fact over 250 species of fishes are found in our rivers. You can also recalled that the Peremabiri Rice farms was the biggest in the entire West Africa during the pre-colonial and colonial period.
“So in terms of potentials we have them, we also discover that beans, rice, yam, potatoes, cassava and others grow very well in our region. What we are saying is that food sufficiency is a given. What we need to do as a people is to have a change of mindset to develop and transform our natural resources.
“Besides, modern agriculture makes it possible for you to grow anything.”
He stated further that the alleged embargo on food products has subtly kick-started the practice of resource control in the country, stressing that with the development, the south should also be allowed to own their resources including crude oil.
“I think it is an opportunity for us to rejig those processes that God has given us. Interestingly I also looked at it from the point of resource control.
“I once said that resource control is inevitable and that it will come in its own way. If some people say that they own the food products, that is resource control and the major advantage of resource control is, it allows people to grow themselves, allows people to own what they have, like they are doing. Then allow us to own the oil because it’s must not end with it. Now that they have started the music, they should play it to the end,” Prof Okaba said.
