The state of Osun Broiler Out growers Production Scheme, OBOPS, has produced at least 5 million birds in the last three years, the scheme managers have said.
Revealing this over the weekend, Mr. Kolawole Ogini who is the facilitator of the second phase of the scheme stated that OBOPS has placed Osun among states with relatively high production in poultry business in Nigeria.
He said; “The first phase was successfully facilitated with capital outlay of about N500 Million from the State Government. Up to 1,500 poultry farmers participated and up to five million chicken birds were successfully produced within three years.
“Constraint faced by paucity of funds led the state to facilitate the same program with Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) Loan facility. Up to 30,000 farmers participation evenly spread across the state is anticipated.
Mr Ogini stated that the second phase of the scheme is a Public-Private Partnership scheme designed to facilitate poultry farming within the State of Osun.
While reviewing the selection process, Ogini said the scheme is open to poultry farmers in the state with 2,000 capacity pens and bio-security facilities in place. This includes perimeter netting and well closed entrance.
Ogini lauded the state government for its successes recorded in several agricultural intervention programs and said the first phase of the scheme recorded a huge success with 768 farmers fully engaged, N785millions paid as profit to farmers as well as making millionaires of the over 120 broilers farmers who keyed into the initiative.
According to him, the OBOPS program has also helped the state government to sustain the elementary school feeding program, O’Meals, which employs of about 1,000 farmers and over 3,000 food vendors.
“The OBOPS II pilot scheme which initially engaged 15 poultry farmers has now grown into 100 farmers across the 30 local governments and 32 local council development areas with 2,000 day old chicks given to each farmer.”
