By Anayo Okoli

UMUAHIA—GOVERNOR Okezie Ikpeazu of Abia State has urged the Federal Government to always sensitize and engage in proper orientation of the people before introducing empowerment programmes to them to ensure the success of the programme

Ikpeazu

Governor Ikpeazu gave the advice when he received officers of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, who visited him in Umuahia, to introduce the new agricultural loan scheme tagged Accelerated Agriculture Development Scheme.

According to Ikpeazu, there was need to give proper orientation to the prospective beneficiaries of CBN loans to ensure that they fully understand what they were going into.

The governor commended the CBN for bringing the agriculture loan programme to the state, as according to him, the state has comparative advantage in agriculture which made the government to make it one of the pillars of its development programme.

Ikpeazu said that the state would key in into palm oil and poultry farming in the new the CBN agriculture loan programme, pointing out that the state has hectares of land where it would build farm clusters for the youths who would be engaged in poultry business.

With such clusters, Ikpeazu believed the beneficiaries would easily be monitored to ensure that the loans were well utilized.

In his remarks, the leader of the CBN team, Mr. Umar Ambursa explained that the team was in Abia State to seek collaboration between the Abia State government and the CBN to ensure improved agricultural production, food security and job creation, especially for youths.