Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State said on Monday that the abandoned poultry farms, initiated by his predecessor, Mr. Ayo Fayose, could not be revived because the project was never designed to succeed.
The governor spoke shortly after the inspection of a poultry farm and processing plant established by his administration in Ikere and Ado Ekiti.
He said the poultry project by the Fayose-led government was not viable, adding that it was a waste to resuscitate it.
While being conducted round the poultry farm and processing plant by the state Commissioner for Agriculture, Mr. Jide Arowosafe, the governor stated that Fayose’s multi-million poultry project had no sustainability plan.

He said, for instance, that there was no equipment in the processing plant situated at Afao Ekiti.
According to Fayemi, the state government established a processing plant for farmers under the Youth in Commercial Agriculture Development scheme with less than N20m.
Fayose is still being tried by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission over allegations of misappropriation of the funds on the poultry project.

Fayemi said, “This government is serious about agriculture and we are not playing lip service to it. The Fayose farms are not even revivable if you look at them. The Benin-Owena poultry farm that we have revived, you can see the quality of the building. We put less than N50m to revive those huge poultry units along Ikere-Ise road. If you compare it to those wooden sheds that are called poultry farms by the previous administration, they have already collapsed; they have all crashed because they were not meant to last in the first instance.

“It is obvious why we are confident that, placed side by side the antecedent of our predecessor, the difference is like 7up.

“The processing plant is put in place for YCAD with less than N20m; what we have done for our YCAD farmers with less than N20m is what was done in this state a few years ago with over a billion naira that is still the subject of investigation now.”