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By Madu Obi
Anambra State Governor, Professor Chukwuma Charles Soludo, has inaugurated the distribution of one million and forty cash crops across the state as part of his administration's sustainable economic initiative.
Among the cash crops currently being distributed in the 326 political wards of the state are seven hundred thousand palm seedlings, two hundred thousand ukwa seedlings, fifty thousand bitter kola and forty thousand paw-paw seedlings.
The exercise is being carried out through the kindred system across the state.
Speaking during the flag off of the exercise, Soludo said: "We are celebrating the revolution, and we are here to signpost again one of the silver bullets that we have crafted to be able to drive sustainable environment and wealth creation, leaving no one behind.
It is an ongoing programme designed to plant 10 million seedlings in Anambra over the next few years. With this effort, palm, oil, coconut oil, and other economic trees will in the medium term, be the next oil.
Anambra is in many ways the second Lagos in many terms. Anambra has the second smallest land mass after Lagos.
But while Lagos is expanding by reclaiming its land mass into the ocean, Anambra's land mass is shrinking due to erosion, with over 1000 active erosion sites.
This is why we are economical with land management and usage. Our agenda is to empower people sustainably, to give them fish for life, creating the greenest and sustainable environment in the process.
We must learn from our past to empower our people in a sustainable manner. Let us reinvent our past. The target is to empower over one million households.
Next year, we will distribute at least another 1,000,000 seedlings, same every year. The target is to hit 10 million seedlings.
We are mainstreaming tree planting as a culture to make Anambra earn carbon credit.
We encourage the educational institutions to turn their environment to become green, plant a tree, it will help with our environment and ecology.
We have porous sandy soil and planting on them will help with our fight against land degradation.
To every community, if you have land ready for plantation, we will help you with seedlings.
What you plant today will be for your children, your great grand children and your great great grand children".
The Minister for Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Mohammad Abubakar represented by the Director of the Ministry, Arthur Mbuba, lauded Governor Soludo's government for driving the initiative which is a strong poverty alleviation programme.
He expressed the commitment of the federal government to partner with Anambra State, especially in the agricultural sector.
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