After about two decades of abandonment by successive administrations, Ebughu Fishing Company Nigeria Limited will soon resume production.

As part of the efforts to breathe life into this ailing foremost fishing industry, Akwa Ibom State Government has concluded arrangements to sell it to another Nigerian fishing company.

According to the state Commissioner for Agriculture, Prof. Etok Ekanem, who briefed the press recently in Uyo, all that is left is the arrival of the technical partners to get it started.

Ekanem expressed the hope that with Ebughu Fishing Company back on its foot, and with other programmes by the present administration, the vision to provide enough fish to feed its citizens would be achieved.

Other measures listed by the agriculture commissioner to stem the rising tide of impending global food crisis, which has also spilled over to the state include plantain development, sealed up rice production and integrated farmers programmes.

According to him, all these are aimed at making Akwa Ibom State to not only produce enough food to feeds its teeming populace, but to also have enough to export by the year 2011.

Addressing a well-attended press conference to mark the 2008 World Food Day in Akwa Ibom State, he stated that as a means of stabilising food prices and ensure all round availability of staple food items such as rice and beans, government has approved the establishment of Akwa Ibom State strategic food reserve programme.

“This year’s world food day with the theme, ‘World Food Security: The challenges of climate change and bioenergy’, he said, is aimed at expanding global awareness of the effects of global warning and biofuel boom”.

The foremost agriculturist who said he is satisfied with the contribution of government towards giving agriculture a pride of place, called on local government chairmen to pay up their own counterpart funding on Fadama III project in the state.

The Permanent Secretary, Elder Mfon Okpongette used the opportunity to appeal to stakeholders to allow the fertiliser programme to run the way government planned.

He called for increased support to farmers to enable them produce more foods “to feed the hungry mouths”.

Okpongette described as unacceptable a situation where one could not see food in the state to buy and opined that appropriate machinery be put in place “to address this inadequacy”.

The state Chairman of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Ephraim Eti commended the commissioner for being frank about the position of the state.

He expressed the belief that henceforth government will take steps to ensure that they “come out with policies that will bring agriculture off the drawing board”.