PRESCO Oil Plc, an agriculture company, has plans to cultivate 100,000 hectares of oil palm across the country, which will create over 50,000 jobs.
To this end, the company also planned to divest from oil palm cultivation and expand to rubber plantation by 2018 as part of its expansion strategies.
Managing Director of Presco Plc, Mr. Felix Nwabuku, who disclosed this while presenting cash rewards to hardworking staff during the company’s end of year party, said the rubber board wood garden for cultivation of the rubber plantation was ready.
He said the plan to divest from oil palm cultivation was the right thing to do, adding that Nigerians are lazy towards agriculture as many of them have lands but refuse to go into agriculture.
He added: “Banks in Nigeria do not support agricultural development. It is the will and determination of the people to drive agriculture, to get into agriculture and practice agriculture. We can then use whatever the government has put in place to support agriculture. Our destination as a group in Nigeria is to have in the long run 100,000 hectares of oil palm in Nigeria. Today we have 16,000 hectares put together and we have staff strength of 5,500.
“It means that in future, if we come to a point where we have 100,000 hectares, we are looking at having close to about 45,000 to 50,000 workers. We have had challenges in 2016, but we have weathered them successfully. In this 2016, we are able to extend our frontiers.
By the time we gathered last year, our Sakponba project which is in Orhionmwon Local Government was an idle, but today the Sakponba project has become a reality, so that is progress,” he added.
