Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu says his administration will rejig the 279-hectare Songhai Food Production Centre now known as the Lagos Food Production Centre in Avia, Badagry.

Sanwo-Olu, who made this known Sunday during a tour of the centre, explained that the move to establish two food centres in Badagry was aimed at achieving food sufficiency in meeting the demand of the growing population in the state.

The Governor hinted that the upscaling of the food production centre would birth the production of organic farming using efficient biological methods in boosting production outputs with modern farming techniques that rely heavily on the combined inputs from local experiences, indigenous technology, business communities and research institutions.

“I have been fully briefed about this project but I considered it necessary to personally embark on this journey to Badagry in order to make an assessment and see what exactly we need to do in terms of intervention.”

“After taking a tour of the project site, what I observed is that the entire project looks more like a job that has not been completed. Therefore, we need to improve on the interventions by the Ministry of Agriculture.”

“With very minimal resources, we have seen what the Ministry has done to keep the project afloat. The government will raise the resources and turn around this project to the level it should be. We will need to deploy more resources to revive and scale up all the machinery and systems already put in place. We will complete the project and open it for commercial production.”

“Also, the centre would aid local agricultural food production thereby promoting the administration’s agricultural policy which is geared towards making farming an enterprise-based activity rather than the usual farming practice.”

“With this, the Avia Food Production Centre hopes to be an export-oriented programme with the aim of creating employment opportunities for the state’s teeming unemployed youths in the areas of fishing, poultry, piggery, afro-forestry, among others.”

Also, the centre, according to the Governor, would be a hub for production of raw materials for the agro-allied industries new environmental products and services, and feedstock for renewable energy supply aimed at opening up the economic potentials of Badagry as well as its vast tourism landscape.

“Lagos is a big State in terms of population, but we also can intervene in our food production value chain. What we are trying to do with the revival of the project is that we want to produce various agricultural products we can consume internally in order to reduce our dependence on external food sources. The Food Production Centre, which we are creating across the State, will be a trigger to other value-added agricultural production our citizens can provide”, he added.