The National Sugar Development Council (NSDC), has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the National Sugar Institute, Kanpur, India to train personnel of the proposed Nigerian Sugar Institute (NSI) located in Ilorin, Kwara state on field and factory operations .
Speaking at the event, the Executive Secretary, National Sugar Development Council, Dr. Latif D. Busari, said the collaboration with NSI would help address the challenges faced in the implementation of Nigeria’s sugar master plan which was launched six years ago.
Dr. Busari said one of the challenges was the lack of the needed manpower to run the sugar factories.
“As you all know, the Nigerian sugar master plan was launched six to seven years ago, and it became clear that we have a serious challenge in terms of the technical manpower needed. We saw that if we must succeed in establishing the sugar factories, the factories will be lacking in the areas of managing the factories and the farms.
“Then we saw the need to set up an institute that will rapidly develop the technical manpower that is needed in the sugar industry in Nigeria.
“So, when we decided on that we started looking for where we could leverage on the experiences that several nations have had already.
“We do not have to reinvent the wheel and looking round we came to two institutions, and one of them is the National Sugar Institute Kanpur, India and what you see today is the outcome of the interaction we had in past few months,” he said.
Responding, the Director General, National Sugar Institute, Kanpur, India, Mr. Narendra Mohan said the agreement was basically for setting up an institute in Ilorin, Kwara state.
“So we are going to give the first details of the extraction such as what type of classrooms, laboratories, equipment and all that.
“The second part is about the training of the trainers because ultimately you do not have the faculty of your own at present.
“So we are going to begin the training sessions, and we have identified the faculty and initially 10 people are to be trained at the faculty in NSI.
“The third, which is the important, Nigeria is having few sugar factories and there is a huge gap in meeting the demand for sugar.
“But the capacity building is one thing. We will give advice on capacity building and also address the challenge for the smooth running of the institute,’’ he said.
Also speaking, the Indian High Commissioner to Nigeria, Mr Abhay Thakur said that India had been involved in the capacity building programmes in Nigeria for a very long time.
He said that one of those was done when the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA) in Kaduna was set up in a similar fashion 50 years ago.
He added that the first commandant of the academy was a well-known Indian brigadier, whose name had gone down in Nigerian history.
