President Muhammadu Buhari will tomorrow unveil one million bags of rice paddy stacked as pyramids in Abuja.
Considered to be the biggest of its type in Africa, the pyramids are located on the grounds of the Abuja Chamber of Commerce and Industries (ACCI) on Airport Road.
The rice pyramids were built with 1 million bags of rice paddy planted and harvested from states across the country under the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (ABP).
The bags of rice paddy that formed the pyramids were recovered from farmers in lieu of cash to pay back for the loans they collected under the ABP.
When The Nation reporter visited the site of the pyramids, a worker of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), who spoke in confidence, said: “The paddy recovery is an ongoing effort as harvests are never concluded at the same time.
“Aggregated paddy for the pyramids across the country is a fraction of the recovered paddies. The ones used at the unveiling represent about 25 per cent of the loan amount.”
The CBN, he explained, “is marching rice millers with the Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria (RIFAN) to off-take the paddy mill and supply the Nigerian markets”.
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