Lagos State has been formally admitted to the Odu’a Investment group as one of the investing states.
The five southwestern states of Osun, Oyo, Ondo, Ekiti, and Ogun states who were before now joint-owners of the company, at the end of a quarterly meeting in Lagos officially admitted Lagos into the group with the acquisition of 115 million shares thus growing the share equity of the company to ₦690 million.
The meeting also saw the signing of the document allowing Lagos to acquire land in their respective states for rice cultivation and production.
The governors also revealed plans to embark on a Rice Accelerated Programme for Integrated Development (Western RAPID) to consolidate actions on food security and job creation in the region.
Lagos State government currently enjoys a partnership agreement with Kebbi state on the cultivation of Rice popularly called ‘Lake Rice’
The partnership with Kebbi State seeks to leverage on Lagos huge population, the purchasing power, processing plant as well as its manpower to translate the rice produced from Kebbi state to finished consumable of international standard.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Nigeria is the continent’s leading consumer of rice, one of the largest producers of rice in Africa and also doubles as one of the largest rice importers in the world.
The Federal Government has also shown its readiness to ban the importation of rice into the country and also boost food production through various support scheme to farmers.
The anchor borrower scheme of the Federal Government has in the last two years of its implementation disbursed a total of ₦55billion by the Central Bank of Nigeria to over 250,000 farmers under the scheme out of this 80 percent or ₦44 billion was given to rice farmers.
Odu’a Investment Company Limited was incorporated in Nigeria as a Limited Liability Company in July 1976, with substantial investment in Real Estate, Food and Beverages industries, Agriculture, Manufacturing, Financial Services, Hotel and Catering, Telecommunication, Printing, and Publishing.
