Anambra-Imo River Basin and Rural Development Authority (AIRBDA), has urged the Federal Government to resuscitate its abandoned rice farm and mill to boost rice production in the country.

The Head of the authority’s Construction and Supervision Department, Mr Nat Nwakpuda, made the call in an interview with our correspondent in Omor, Anambra.

He said the farm has the potential of putting to cultivation about 25,000 hectares if the government provided enough funds to overhaul the scheme.

“Once the federal government turns it around it would be operated and maintained properly; we have other irrigation projects but this is the largest we have and this is the one we are asking them to rehabilitate,” he said.

“The challenges faced in this project is funding. We want to sustain this project and even expand it because we have room.

“The original concept was for 2,500 hectares, we now have 3,350 hectares so we expand it for now to 5,000, then 10,000 hectares.”

He attributed the collapse of the original project to inadequate power supply and poor funding.

It would be recalled that the project began operation in 1993 and was managed by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) which left the country during the June 12, 1993 presidential election crisis.

The project went under by 1999 when the management became unable to meet its energy requirement due to high cost of diesel.

Nwakpuda expressed optimism on the potentials of the project to boost the nation’s food security and appealed to the federal government to include the project in its rice development programme.