Wunmi Semudara
The President of Tito Group, Asiwaju Isaac Akinkunmi, has supported the Benue State Government with an Anthrax vaccine for the vaccination of 5,000 livestock in the state.
The business mogul led his management staff to donate to the State Task Force on Anthrax Prevention and Control.
The task force was chaired by Dr Edward Amali, a Director of Livestock Services at the Benue State Ministry of Agriculture.
While donating at the Ministry of Agriculture Headquarters in Makurdi, Chief Akinkunmi, explained that his company being a milk processing and yoghurt production company that uses milk “decided to set up a ranch for backward integration, to produce milk locally to reduce to its barest minimum the importation of milk.
“So we therefore keep a lot of cattle on a ranching basis because we have embraced ranching as a way of raising livestock and we are finding it very rewarding.
“On the arrival of Anthrax in the country we found that if we do not move quickly, and it invades our farm, it will be very devastating. We, therefore, approached the Veterinary Research Institute in Vom and procured the vaccine. We vaccinated all our cattle. We extended this gesture to the communities in our immediate surroundings.
“So we thought it wise when we heard that the government had constituted a task force, to control and prevent Anthrax from entering Benue state, to procure the Anthrax vaccine and donate to the task force as part of our humble donation to the work of the task force.
“We are therefore donating vaccines for the vaccination of 5,000 livestock in the state.
Ours is to lend our humble support to the efforts of the task force and the state government.”
Receiving the vaccines on behalf of the task force and the government,
The Chairman, Dr. Amali, while receiving the vaccines , spoke on the dangers Anthrax, pose to the health of humans and livestock.
He noted that the state had not recorded any case so far.
While commending Titi Group for the donation, Dr. Amali recalled that the company had been supporting schools, the Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, in the state among other several interventions and urged other cooperate organisations, as well as those in the livestock sector to emulate the donor and his company.
The Chairman assured the donor that the taskforce would deploy the vaccines for use across the state.
