Bayelsa Agropreneur, Chief Robert Oruge solicits Gov’t Financial Assistance to expand his Farm
By: Odieh Ramon, Yenagoa.
The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of God is my Light Sea Never Dry Farm Nembe Ogbolomabiri, in Nembe Local Government Area of Bayelsa State Chief Roberts Joshua Oruge, on Tuesday has asked the federal and state governments to assist him with loans to enable him expand his farms to accommodate more seedlings and farming equipments.
Chief Oruge who is managing four farms at different locations spaninig five thousand hectares of land is into Agro-Preneur which cut across cocoa farming, cashew farming, fish farming and palm oil.
The fish pond is about 40 by 75 feet in length and width while the palm is over ten thousand and still expecting more.
Oruge while answering questions from journalists when the team of the Bayelsa Media Network Award (BMNA) visited his farms in Nembe Ogbolomabiri community to inspect the farms and also know the challenges, said his first experience was in 1995 when he took over the farms from his grandmother.
According to him, as regards loans, “since from my starting till date, I have not received any help or loans from anybody, Bayelsa government sometimes ago came with Nirsal to the farms and inspected everything and asked me to come for loan which I applied but nothing came out.
“In Bayelsa system of governance, if you don’t have anyone standing for you, you can’t go anywhere. I don’t have anybody to stand for me to say Joshua is a farmer let’s help him. No one, though I have not make any effort to access federal government loans because I don’t even know the link”.
Speaking further said, it was purely a cassava farms before he ventured into cattles and poultry business.”I was having 614 cows in this forest, I drilled borehole to supply water, staff quarters and other things to make it more conducive for the business .
“But, unfortunately I woke up one Saturday morning and started hearing cow noise and by the time I got there, they have started dying and between Saturday and Tuesday, I lost 216 cows and when I rushed to the drinking pit, I discovered that some people went there and poisoned the waters with garmalin and for any cow that drank from that water were all dead.
“Because of that, l was frustrated. I was even having a poultry here where I collected 83 crates of egg everyday. Because of the way the cow died I decided to abandoned these place for a while”.
Chief Oruge further said, he initially went into livestock’s business because all the meats they consumed come from outside, saying that, “in our history we have more cows than the north before which we called native cows, every communities owned cows but we abandoned them and we are expecting somebody to bring us cow to eat.
“The irony of it is that the day they stopped to bring cow for us to eat that means we will not have anything to eat. We are talking about freedom for the Niger Delta but with this we can’t have it. You are depending on somebody and you are fighting the person, you can’t have freedom when you are depending on somebody to give you food”
He said as time goes on, he will go back to his livestock’s farming business because he has gotten some knowledge in it, “but where is the finance? he asked.
“For now an having 15 persons working everyday, in the next few years, “I will have more workers because by then I would started milling my palm oil”.
“For the award, I will be happy having been nominated for an award by Bayelsa Media Network Award BMNA as “The Best Entrepreneur of the Year”, nobody rejected good thing , I needed that award too.Within this areas, I see myself as a great farmer.
“I want to thank BMNA for recognizing my little contributions to the food productions in Bayelsa state and indeed Nigeria. The award will help me to do more in expanding my business”.
