Benue State House of Assembly has attributed the high unemployment rate and its impact on production in the state to the absence of agro-allied industries.
The legislature urged the state government to establish more agro-allied industries to encourage the indigenes, especially young persons, to embrace massive production of agricultural produce.
This followed a motion moved by the representative of APC/Kwande East Anyor Matu during plenary on Tuesday in Makurdi.
Matu said that establishing more industries would go a long way toward enhancing speedy development and raising the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and per capita income of Benue indigenes.
He reiterated that the industries would encourage farmers to mass-produce agricultural produce, increase value addition, and increase production activities in the state.
According to him, “Benue is a purely agrarian state, blessed with rich alluvia soil suitable for all types of crops,’’ stressing that the crops are consumed without any form of value addition because there were no industries to process and add the deserving value before putting them to markets.
“The absence of the agro-allied industries with their attendant value addition was responsible for higher numbers of unemployment, as production activities were still scanty within the state.
“For example, Benue yams are the best yams compared to other varieties, yet there was no industry to process them and make it a sought after product in the world, the yam is just one among many other farm produce produced in the state that are being wasted away.
“The incumbent government was favourably disposed to the long cry of industrialisation of the state with the view to exhaustively harnessing the opportunities that abound in the state.
“Although the journey was still far as the state was not anywhere near to be addressed as an industrialised state, this is the basis for which there is still very high rate of unemployment and consequent low per capita income of indigenes of this great state.
“If more industries are built in the State, it would naturally give impetus to farmers to increase production of crops required by the existing factories as raw materials as it is customary that farmers easily tend towards production of crops that would give them more reward.”
