By Jonathan Ugbal; Government House Correspondent
Cross River governor, Benedict Ayade yesterday slammed the Director General of the state’s micro enterprise development agency (MEDA), Ignatius Atsu for what he termed as eye service in the distribution of a 200 million naira agro SME fund.
Ayade who interrupted Atsu while he was giving his opening remarks in a presentation meeting with a team of the Bank of Agriculture led by the director general, Professor Danju-Bala Danju said Atsu’s statement of disbursing 190 million Naira to over 2, 000 people in the name of micro financing was paying lip service to growing the agricultural sector.
“How do you give 80, 000 or so to someone as a credit facility to farm? That money is not enough considering the fact that most of these people have children to feed, school fees to be paid.
“Of course that is where the money goes into, go around and you won’t find this farms. The money you got back came from secondary and alternative sources.
“Over 2000 people sharing 190 million? That is just eye service because it won’t do anything” Ayade said.
He also called for a change in the mechanism, method and practice of agriculture in Nigeria as according to him what we do today does not translate into high productivity and yield.
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