Date: 2020-11-16

In a bid to encourage industrialisation in Kwara State, Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq has inaugurated a shea butter processing plant at Wozibe, a community in Kaiama Local Government Area of the state.

Speaking at the inauguration ceremony, Abdulrazaq said it came at the right time when the state was assiduously synergising with relevant stakeholders in establishing new economic projects as well as resuscitating the moribund industries in the state.

The governor, who was represented at the occasion by the Commissioner for Enterprise, Alhaji Abdulwahab Agbaje, said the state is blessed with shea tree, with high economic potential in shea butter production.

The project, according to him, is a tripartite arrangement between the World Trade Organisation, Nigerian Export Promotion Council and Kwara State.

According to the governor, the project is intended at shifting shea butter processing from the local way, which is cumbersome in nature, unhygienic and time-consuming, to international standard.

"The state, on its part, is willing at all times to assist the existing and other interested investors to promote shea-value-chain development towards the actualisation of the lofty goals of optimising the benefits derivable from the shea sector," he said.

Abdulrazaq, however, expressed optimism that the project will go a long way towards ameliorating the economic hardship caused by the ravaging COVID-19 pandemic in the country and the world at large.

He said the state government, in conjunction with the stakeholders, had set machinery in motion to create a conducive environment for appointing a resourceful investor to manage the shea butter facility in Kaiama to enhance economic development of the state.

Earlier, the Executive Director of NEPC, Mr Segun Awolowo, who was represented by Mr Afolabi Bello, thanked the Kwara State government for creating an enabling environment and for ensuring the completion of the project, which he said had long been abandoned.

He said the shea butter factory project started in October 2012 in the state and was completed by the present administration with similar projects executed in Niger and Oyo states.