The governor of Lagos state, Babajide Sanwo-Olu has announced that barring any emergencies, the new rice mill being built by the state government at the Imota area of Ikorodu will kick off its operations before the end of the first quarter of 2022.
The governor gave this assurance on Friday after he toured the project site, saying that the facility would undergo a pre-production test run before the end of Q1 2022 after which its full production capacity will be unlocked.
The governor was followed by the Commissioner for Agriculture, Abisola Olusanya and some other members of the state cabinet for an on-the-spot evaluation of the large agro project which is coming two years after the governor’s initial visit to the site.
Sanwo-Olu said he was happy with the progress seen on the site, having first seen the project at the foundation level. He also revealed that the project should have been completed by the end of 2020, but was hindered by the coronavirus pandemic.
He however assured that the new deadline is untouchable as he promised to persuade all the contractors to increase their activities before the first quarter of next year. He said, “We are going to charge on our contractors working on-site to ensure that by the end of the first quarter of next year, this mill should have started operations; that is, we should start producing rice from here.”
Sanwo-Olu then went ahead to say that they are waiting to see how quickly they can advance work on the storage facility, which can take production up to six months. The facility has 16 silos with a combined capacity of 40,000 metric tonnes (each silo having 2,500 metric tonnes). The governor said that the two silo sections were at about 85 and 70 percent completion.
He assured that construction work on the storage facilities would be completed within the next four weeks, followed by a major cleanup across the site in readiness for a production test run. He also said discussion around the facility’s mode of operation and production process will begin when the facility is ready, saying that its full production will drastically reduce the prices of rice as well as the pressure which the commodity faces.
The rice mill has been built with the capacity to produce 2.8 million 50kg bags of rice every year, generating 1,500 direct jobs and 254,000 indirect ones.
