Cross River, Canada to partner on health, fishery, agro-forestry

 

Cross River State Government and Canada have identified health, fishery and agro forestry as areas of collaboration for skills acquisition, trainings and micro financing for entrepreneurship.

The partnership, a resolution of a meeting between Governor Ben Ayade and the Canadian High  Commissioner to Nigeria, Ambassador Perry  Calderwood, held at the Governor's Office in Calabar comes on the heels of several others with countries that view Cross River as strategic and secure for investments.

The Canadian High Commissioner said his country has been partnering the state through several programmes in the areas of health and was looking forward to include agriculture even as his country bids to become a key player in the exploitation and utilization of solid minerals in the state to create wealth for the citizenry.

Calderwood who announced a $15 million  window programme for skill acquisition, training and  micro-finance for youths in the areas of agro-forestry, fisheries and agriculture, said, that the meeting was also an approach for the state to increase its investment in essential medicine, especially for women and children, scale up access to diarrhoea treatment, oral rehydration.

According to him, "This programme aims at developing entrepreneurship in Cross River State in the areas of fisheries and forestry in particular. This matches the energy and the enthusiasm of the youths in your state who are keen to work, and matching that with the natural endowment of mineral resources, you have in your state in the areas that I have mentioned, this will achieve sustainable economic development."

In his remarks, Governor Ayade said his administration was poised to creating an alternative economy for the state, pointing out that the state would readily partner any investor to ensure the realization of their investment.

He promised to upgrade the facilities at the School of Nursing to meet a standard where surgery and other advanced medical studies are offered. He said he will approve the request of the institution to get certain facilities to ensure its accreditation.

Ayade who said his ultimate aim was to decouple the state from dependence on federal allocation to survive, further solicited the support of the High Commissioner to support the state’s Green Police initiative which he said was a large scale programme to assist the state in achieving its goals.

"The Green Police will grow trees that we can process into end products, protect and conserve the forest, ensure that the environment is properly taken care of. It will be involved in waste management, urban afforestation and proper agro forestry,” he said.

On the superhighway running through a forest reserve, Ayade assured Calderwood the issue was a misconception that has since been taken care of as it does not cut through the National Park.

While showing the High Commissioner the route which work has since begun, Ayade said as an environmentalist and a leader of a state which has about 50 percent of the country's remaining rainforest reserve and hosts one of the 25 biodiversity hotspots in the world,  there was no way the planning of the road would have included cutting through the Cross River National Park.

The Canadian High Commissioner, upon learning the state’s plan in developing its solid minerals, urged the governor to attend the PDAC mining convention in Canada scheduled for the first week of March 2016.