In its bid to create wealth, provide jobs, reduce poverty, improve food security & nutrition, provide renewable energy and reduce carbon footprint, the Federal Executive Council (FEC) on Wednesday, approved the concession of the Cassava Bio-mass, Bio-ethanol Value Chain.

This is even as the Executive Council approved the National Fire Detection And Alarm System (NAFDAS) for the effective prevention, detection and management of fire across the country.

Both projects which are under the regulatory guidance of the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC) targets among other things, a revenue generation of 180 billion naira.

While the NAFDAS project will generate a total of 75 billion naira in the 15-year concession period, the Cassava Bio-ethanol Value Chain will generate a total revenue of 105 billion within the 5-year concession period.

The Cassava Bio-Ethanol Value Chain will be done on a pilot phase aims to build a Bio-technology Industrial Park on a 20-hectare plot across 20 Universities, Academia and Research & Development Institutes.

In the pilot phase, 5,000 special hybrid cassava (TME 419) stems will be planted per hectare, (100,000 stems for 20 hectares).  In addition, the project will supply Organic Fertilisers/Boosters/Conditioners, Pre and post emergent Herbicides, Pesticides, Insecticides, Fungicides and Knapsack Sprayers.

The project also seeks to double cassava production from the current 62 million tons to output of over 120 million tons with improved tropical agro-ecology, bio-technology, intense mechanisation and effective partnership resource mobilisation, Nigeria can double output to 120 million metric tons in 5 years.

The key goal of this cassava – Bioethanol pilot project is to demonstrate the efficacy of a private sector led approach in promoting investment in renewable biomass and create wealth, provide jobs, reduce poverty, improve food security & nutrition, provide renewable energy and reduce carbon footprint.

The project is proposed to be financed with a grant from the Federal Government and Concessionaire investment totalling N11.9bn. The revenue stream presented by the project includes sales of cassava stem, cassava flour, garri, starch and Bio-ethanol.

Total revenue for the 5 years concession period is N105,610,000,000.

For the NAFDAS project, it aims to provide fire mitigation hardware, software and equipment that will be linked to a cloud network which will be supervised by the Federal Fire Service through a Private entity.

Through the use of this technology, call and response time in fire incidents will be automated thus drastically reduced, avoidable incidents forestalled, more life and property saved and generally improve the efficiency in fire prevention, detection and management.

This means that smoke alarms and other fire detection hardware will be linked to a server which will alert the system when the user is in distress without them having to call for help.

The project will begin on a pilot scale with 7 states of the federation before rolling out to all other states across the country.

The total projected cost for the project is put at N3.5 billion wheras government targets a revenue generation of N75 billion within the 15-year period of the concession.

Share of Revenue to government was projected as 40% of subscription revenue totaling N17,262,850,871 (an average of N1,150,856,724 over the 15 years proposed concession period).

The revenue stream presented by the project includes margin on installations and annual subscription fee from users of the service.

Both projects are to be executed under the regulatory guidance of ICRC and revenue shared between the Federal Government and the concessionaire at a ratio decided in the concession agreement.. End.

Signed:

Ifeanyi Nwoko

Ag. Head, Media and Publicity

For enquiries send a mail to: info@icrc.gov.ng