Sanwo-Olu Vows to Replicate Dangote Refinery’s Equivalent in Food Security Syatem

Dike Onwuamaeze

The Governor of Lagos State, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, has declared that the state government would replicate an equivalent of Dangote Refinery in the state’s food system with the Lagos Central Food Security Systems and Logistics Park, which is being constructed on 220 hectares of land in Epe.

Sanwo-Olu declared this during a working visit to the project site that being handled by the Origin Technology Group.

He said that the Phase 1 of the project would be completed and commissioned in the second quarter of 2025.

He said: “What you see in Dangote Refinery on the petrochemical side is what you are seeing in this food security hub project on the food side. We are writing our destiny with our hands. We want the citizens of Lagos to have the ability to have food sufficiency.

“This project will enable us to stabilise prices once we are able to have off take from some of the states that are producing food items. They will bring them down and we can store them here and redistribute.”

Sanwo-Olu said that the vision to embark on the construction of the food security system and logistic park flowed from the disruption of global food chain during the COVID-19 period and ongoing wars.

He said: “Then we come up with a strategy that Lagos should be able at a very large scale to protect itself from food insecurity. And now we can see that that audacious move we made three years ago in our view is on a right course as the largest food logistic hub in the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa is here. It is sitting in a land of over 220 hectares. You can see what would be the largest cold and dry chain storage facility.”

The Executive Chairman of Origin Technology Group, Mr. Samuel J. Samuel, in his welcome address, said that the only project that could be likened to this is in France, which is on about 247 hectares of land and took six years to build.

He said: “It has taken us just two years plus to get to where we are now from ground zero. All thanks to the commitment of Mr. Governor.  We have the cold store which is going to be the largest glass freezer anywhere around Africa. It is a 25,000 square meter of glass freezer. It will be able to stock over 250 trucks of any cold goods from fish, vegetable, beef and others. With this project, Lagos will drive the price of food items down by 50 per cent when completed.

“We also have the dry store, which is about 11 football fields. We also have the admin building of five flours; we have the clinic and fire station. We have a 4.0 mega power plant that has already been procured waiting for installation.”