Adamawa State is by far the biggest waste in Nigeria when it comes to tourism. This state is made up of undulating hills, scenic plateaus, and mountains. America’s Grand Canyon, Canada’s Banff National Park, and Australia’s Ayers Rock have nothing on Adamawa State, but alas, almost no tourism revenue is generated from this natural resource.
In the extreme south of Adamawa State is part of the Gashaka Gumti National Park, a large wildlife park that contains large populations of bushbuck, African buffalo, patas monkey, black-and-white colobus, giant pangolin, and hippopotamus, along with some of Nigeria’s last remaining Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees, African leopards, and African golden cat populations. Why the Adamawa State government has not turned this into another Kruger National Park is beyond me.
Hotels, bars, restaurants, theme parks, amusement arcades, casinos, etc., should be built around all of Adamawa’s mountain sites like Mount Atlantika, Mandara, the Shebshi ranges, and the Adamawa Plateau. Were I the Adamawa State governor, I would take a trip to Las Vegas to see what they have done there.
Can I also mention that Adamawa State is crisscrossed by the River Benue and River Gongola, so it should be a major source of hydroelectric electricity. Why a hydroelectric power plant capable of generating 5,000 MW has not been built at somewhere like Numan is totally beyond me.
In addition, Adamawa is an agriculture-based state, which mainly relies on livestock and crops such as cotton, groundnuts, millet, cassava, guinea corn, and yams for its survival. It is the eighth largest state in Nigeria, with 36,917 km² of land, so there is no shortage of farmland. In an ideal world, Adamawa would be littered with US-style prairie commercial plantations mass-producing food and cash crops.
Like the rest of you, I am waiting for the Adamawa State government to construct industrial estates in its urban centres like Yola, Numan, Hong, Mubi, Madagali, Lamurde, and Song. We should have food processors in all these areas converting harvested crops into finished foodstuffs. Maybe the Adamawa State government should take out a minority stake in some of these companies under public-private enterprise ventures.
In addition to fertile land and beautiful hills, Adamawa State also has solid minerals like limestone, tantalite, and kaolin. I am perplexed as to why the Adamawa State government has not invited the likes of Rio Tinto to come and open a processing plant in the territory.
At the moment, the Dangote group operates a sugar production factory in Numan which has a sugar refining capacity of 3,000 tonnes of cane per day. This needs to be expanded upon, with local farmers encouraged to grow sugarcane commercially.
Adamawa should also be one of the major beneficiaries of plans to introduce widespread ranching across Nigeria. Adamawa State has around 1.5 million cattle and 64 grazing reserves, of which 30 are gazetted. Maybe the state can become the epicentre of the Nigerian cattle industry. Adamawa currently has a thriving livestock industry, as it has 2.5 million heads of cattle and traders come from all over the country and West Africa to buy and sell cattle in its markets, such as the Mubi International Cattle Market.
Despite Adamawa State’s high level of cattle production, its markets are poorly developed without essential services like meat processing, meaning live animals have to be transported in trucks for four days before they reach cities with high demand. Were I the Adamawa State governor, I would be planning to construct an Adamawa Cattle Rail Link that would link cities like Yola and Mubi with cities such as Abuja, Kano, Kaduna, Maiduguri, Lagos, Enugu, Port Harcourt, etc. We would then float the Adamawa Livestock Company and guarantee meat delivery to you within 24 hours of placing your order, whatever part of Nigeria you are in.
