The Kebbi State Governor, Alhaji Abubakar Atiku Bagudu, has revealed why the government has refused to release their farmland to billionaire businessman Alhaji Aliko Dangote who plans to establish a sugar plantation and a factory in the state. Bagudu disclosed this at an interactive session with intellectuals of Kebbi State origin working at Usman Danfodiyo University, Sokoto. According to Bagudu,”Dangote Industries’ application for 54,000 hectares of land to establish a sugar factory pre-dated my administration, but they could only identify about 24,000 hectares suitable for sugar cane cultivation. When we came on board, there was pressure on us because all of those 24,000 hectares belong to farmers. And the proposal we met on ground was that those farmers would be paid compensation of about a hundred thousand naira per hectare.
“As a government, the whole cabinet looked at the proposal. Our concern is, you are going to pay a farmer hectare of land where he produces his crops. You will be making an income of 700,000 a year where he has been making 100,000 and make him a labourer forever. How as a social policy can you justify this opportunity cost? What is the net contribution in output that this investment is going to bring, for instance, if you are replacing your current production of rice by the production of sugar cane? Let there be no mistakes about it, we welcome investors and we thank Dangote Industries for identifying Kebbi as one of those states he wants to invest in. But above all, the most important thing is the need to ensure that investments serve and benefit our people. We hope to convince Dangote that there are other ways this can be done to have better security for his investment, like agreeing that our farmers become his out-growers and he buys from them for production in his factory.”
