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Heritage raises support for Triton Group’s Oyo State project

By Chijioke Nelson
05 June 2017   |   4:37 am
Heritage Bank Plc has declared fresh support for Triton Group, as it identifies with its subsidiary - Globus Resources Limited, to flag off the second phase of afforestation programme in Oyo State.

Heritage Bank

Heritage Bank Plc has declared fresh support for Triton Group, as it identifies with its subsidiary – Globus Resources Limited, to flag off the second phase of afforestation programme in Oyo State.

This is coming just as the bank had recently handed a N2 billion long-term facility to Triton Aqua Africa Limited (TAAL), as part of finance for the first phase of the project, which covered the expansion of the group’s aquaculture businesses.

This includes nursery/hatchery for the production of fingerlings and brood stock in Ikeja; and earthen ponds for catfish and tilapia in Asejire, Iwo, and Gambari towns in Oyo.

Under the new programme, Globus Resources is expected to plant about 350,000 seedlings of teak, Gmelina arborea and Cidrella trees yearly over a period of nine years, in a bid to reforest about 9,000 hectares of land in Gambari village of the state.

The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Heritage Bank, Ifie Sekibo, commended the state government and Triton Group for the initiative that would be handled by Globus Resources to reforest the area again.

He pointed out that if every governor could put a little bit of backing into agriculture as a way of life, it would go a long way to better the lives of the people.
“We seemed to forget that our lives as Nigerians/Africans started with the land. If we don’t take care of the land, the land will take care of us. The land does not need us, but we need the land to take care of us. Afforestation is one of the ways to take care of the land and we need to talk about carbon credit because we need to find a way to make money,” he said.

Meanwhile, Sekibo expressed satisfaction with the pace at which the project was going, and assured the company of Heritage Bank’s continued support for Triton Group’s efforts to boost the agricultural base of the nation as long as the business relationship between them remained mutually beneficial.

The Chairman/Managing Director, Triton Group, Ashvin Samtani, said the group has been operating in Nigeria for about 40 years, adding that they are now Nigerians, not expatriates, as beyond the tree planting initiative, the group intends to employ about 5,000 people.

The Deputy Director of Forestry in the state’s Ministry of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Rural Development, Akinwale Moradayo, who also represented the commissioner, stressed the need to do something to protect the land, so that its inhabitants would not be consumed.

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