EKITI BREAKS GROUND ON MULTI-MILLION NAIRA POULTRY PROCESSING PLANT
Dayo Thomas
Ekiti State Government has officially flagged off construction of a world-class poultry processing plant in Ado-Ekiti. The project handover to the contractor was executed under the World Bank-supported Livestock Productivity and Resilience Support Project, L-PRES. With this move, Ekiti is moving from promises to concrete, laying the foundation for a facility designed to handle processing, preservation, and value addition right within the state. The goal is clear: stop exporting Ekiti’s birds to other states for slaughter and start keeping the jobs, revenue, and quality control at home.
Ekiti currently produces about 40,000 broiler birds every month, but more than 80% of them leave the state for processing because there are no modern facilities locally. That means farmers lose money on transport, birds lose quality, and the state loses economic value. The new plant will reverse that trend by giving farmers a place to process, chill, and package locally. Production targets are ambitious. The state is pushing to grow output from 20,000 birds monthly to about 150,000 birds before the end of next year. That kind of scale is only possible when farmers have infrastructure they can trust.
This is not just about slaughtering birds. The facility is expected to create over 100 direct jobs for technicians, processors, and quality control staff, plus about 1,000 indirect jobs across feed supply, transport, packaging, and retail. To make it sustainable, the plant will include modern waste management systems that convert poultry waste into fertilizer and biogas. That means cleaner operations, extra income streams for farmers, and less environmental damage. Commissioner for Agriculture, Ebenezer Boluwade, described the project as a “game changer” for Ekiti’s poultry industry, saying the state is now positioned to become Nigeria’s leading hub for poultry production.
The processing plant is the flagship, but it sits inside a much larger World Bank-backed L-PRES package for Ekiti. The full plan includes semi-automated poultry pen estates across all three senatorial districts, and two ultra-modern cattle markets in Ado-Ekiti and Omuo. These projects are designed to work together: birds are raised in modern pens, processed in Ado-Ekiti, and marketed through organized cattle and livestock markets. Ekiti is also expanding its Ekiti Broiler Production Scheme, EBOPS, which has already produced over 150,000 birds and trained 200+ youths since 2023. With infrastructure plus training, the state is building both capacity and capability.
Ekiti is done losing value to out-of-state processors. This plant puts farmers, youths, and local businesses at the center of the poultry value chain. When farmers can process at home, they earn more. When youths have jobs, they stay. When waste becomes fertilizer and biogas, the cycle completes. That is how you turn poultry from a backyard venture into a state economy driver.