All is set for Vice President Yemi Osinbajo’s visit to Edo on Tuesday to inaugurate a 60,000 metric tonnes-capacity fertilizer plant in Auchi, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports.
Alhaji Sadiq Kassim, spokesman of Wacot, the company managing the plant, told NAN on Monday in Auchi that the plant would create about 500 direct jobs for people in the area.
He said that the Edo State-owned fertilizer plant was rehabilitated by Wacot under the presidential fertilizer initiative to boost farming nationwide.
“The plant will provide immediate 500 direct jobs to indigenes of Edo State as soon as the Vice President commissions it tomorrow.
“We are managing the plant under a long term lease with Edo government,” he said.
Kassim did not disclose the company’s financial involvement.
“All I can say is that we plan extension of the project in few years to scale up the capacity and turnout which will be in billions of naira,” he said.
He commended the people of the community whom he described as “very homely and accommodating’’.
“Our relationship with the host community is absolutely fantastic. We have made extensive contact with the people who are grassroots farmers; they are homely and very accommodating towards us,” he said.
NAN reports that Gov. Godwin Obaseki had, during a visit to the site of the plant in January, expressed optimism that the plant would become functional this year.
The Edo Fertilizer Company, Auchi, had remained dormant since it was commissioned during Lucky Igbinedion administration on March 22, 2003.