See The Vision and Hold On

Let me know, if you find him

I am sure you have been wondering what happened to me this past few weeks? Well,... malaria is the culprit! He seized me and kept me down for a few days. I managed to escape and am back now. Great!

Whilst I was down, history making events occurred in the world-USA's rating downgrade, riots in London, Mubarak shown in court on a stretcher- these occurrences emphasize the saying that "no condition is permanent". You may be up one day and the next you dive. One just has to ensure that when you are up, you plant seeds that will produce fruits to tide you when the "down" times come. In Nigeria, we have also had our own occurrences- the President's 6 year single term for presidents and state governors proposal left ripples in its wake. Mustafa's revelations during his trial that Yoruba leaders collected a bribe to work against Abiola, the testimonies during the Senate panel investigating the FGN's privatisation which revealed the then President Obasanjo interferred with the due process in the privatisation process, nationalisation of some banks. Interesting times indeed.

In Bayelsa, we have gubernatorial elections in February 2012, as INEC revealed. This means that electioneering will soon commence. You know, I do not understand why anyone who has observed the election process in Nigeria will oppose the President's proposal for 6 years single term. Having participated in this years' election process, I can tell you that for about 6 months prior to the date of the elections, the government cannot really focus on work because the incumbent candidate has to concentrate on winning the primaries and then the elections. Campaigns begin fully and every hand in the government is needed for campaigning. Also, after the elections, the government needs another 6 months to settle. In all, we lose about 1 year to changing governments. The governments actually have only 3 years to work of its current 4 year term and 6 years in total where it is re-elected. Why do we not just give the elected governors and presidents 6 years single term? Since this is what they will, in fact, have.

The beneficiaries of the Child Development Account Project (CDA STARS) have been in and out of our Project office giving us their saved money to keep. They have started saving money for their accounts and are tired of waiting for the accounts to be open. I do not understand why opening an account will take this long! The Bank manager has assured me that by the end of this week, the accounts will all be open. My fingers are crossed. It is amazing that people are this interested in saving. This confirms that where people are properly educated, they will embrace good habits. The students have been attending the after school class and learning from the CDA STARS workbook, which is designed to teach the students how to be more responsible financially and socially. Each month, the teachers in the schools in charge of the after school programs  are required to submit reports on the after school activities. They have started submitting these reports and I was happy to see how detailed the reports were. The reports specified what the students were taught at each after school class, their responses and how much each student deposited for savings. When we started this project, we all had doubts as to whether the students and their parents will agree to save and also whether the students will attend the after school classes, but the contrary has been the case. I guess it does pay not to judge a book by its cover. Good thing the Governor persisted and did not let the skeptics wear out his interest in the CDA Project. 

Back to the Governor Explains - I will focus on His Excellency's explanations on the developement of the agricultural sector.

In response to questions, His Excellency, Chief Timipre Sylva has explained that the agricultural sector will take off shortly having accessed funds from the Federal Agricultural funds. The Governor said:



Sagbama agric estate

• Sagbama will be an agricultural city, so all projects involving agriculture is being taken to Sagbama.  Sagbama city will soon start as the Federal Government will soon build some agricultural estates.
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• The fishing trawlers, currently in Ogbia, went to sea and came back with lots of fish. But government has not been a good manager. The government just set up new companies that will have private sector management to manage the fishing sector and we are expecting a boost.

• Bayelsa Palm has a lot of potential but the problem is that we bought 10 tonne mills, which we have been advised have gone out of production, only 20 tonnes mills are being produced. If we buy the 20 tonnes mill, the estate we have cannot sustain it, we need to expand the estate from 1,200 hectares to 4,000 hectares. We are in the process of so expanding and it takes some planning but the public will not be happy until they see some action.
• We produce fish but at a subsistence level and we are working at building a farm that will produce fish at commercial level. The Okaka Farm can produce fish for the whole of Bayelsa. With the funding we have received and the new Commissioner in place, we will soon have more fish in the State.
• The shirmp farm in Amassoma road does not seem like a natural location due to the need to decentralize development. A shrimp farm should ideally be in salt water area like Brass but this will make access difficult. Amassoma was chosen because of its roads and the experts said the salt water could be transferred to Amassoma for breeding the shrimps there.
• On the issue of the location of the other fish farms in residential areas- these farms are located in these areas that do not seem ideal because they are naturally found ponds. We did not want to sandfill these natural ponds and dig up ours to prevent environmental issues. We decided to turn all natural ponds into fish farms. Most of these ponds will be turned in tourist attractions where people can go and point to the fish they want and have it made for them in the surrounding restuarant and bars or simply fish from the bridges.

Fishing right in the centre of town

• The Okaka farm is over 70 percent completed and will be complete in a few months.

His Excellency explained that most of these projects are long term projects where the benefits will really be enjoyed in some years to come. As they say, "Rome was not built in a day". We need to share the vision and work towards attaining it. Next week, I will explain some other sector, in His Excellency's words. Have a nice week.