By Eval Asikong
Ayade’s new economic order, the rise of Agro-allied industries, is a stern rejection to the revulsive economic reality that existed before Ayade stepped in to assume the flagship position of the state. It is unimaginable that a state’s economy with 21,050 square kilometres of fertile landmass and the population of 4million people could limit her economy to an in-expansive public sector that can hardly engage and cater for 3 percent of her population, leaving throngs of unemployed youth in the streets with arousal of security tensions with throes in their wake.
It is for this reason that a deliberate roadmap on economic recovery, informed by the principle of comparative advantage, has been developed. This trajectory that has set Cross River State on the pedestal of a production economy, has been perceived as “the Ayade New Economic Order”, a deviation from a repulsive economic reality, wherein the state was identified with the laid-back of a consumer economy.
Because it offers opportunities to activate and patronize the labour market, Ayade’s new economic order has been adjudged to provide the best template for economic recovery and growth, not only in Cross River State, but in states with cognate features.Today, Cross River State is a rising industrial cynosure in the eyes of other striving economies both within and beyond the frontiers of Sub-sahara Africa because of the numerous industries set by the Ayade led administration.
Ayade, in his generosity and goodwill, is very eager to lend this template of accelerative economic growth and recovery plan to any national or subnational unit that is willing, as the Federal Government is already borrowing a lift from his template.
This is an ultra modern rice mill located at Ogoja. While the Rice Seedling Plant in Calabar is to feed the entire rice farmers in Nigeria with improved nurseries, the Ultra Modern Mega Rice Mill at Ogoja is to be fed with products from farmers with harvested rice in very massive quantity. It has the capacity to service many states at the same time.