Putting Maidontoro Village on the map

Description:

A German based renewable energy firm has plans underway to develop a remote community in Plateau State by providing electricity and farming infrastructure.

Sunflower Integrated Farms And Energy Limited (SIFEL Ltd.) is a company which provides farm economic and renewable energy solutions.

SIFEL Limited has 200 hectares land and a memorandum of understanding with the Maidontoro community for provision of critically needed electricity infrastructures. SIFEL intends to use a mixture of bio-fuels, Gas, solar and wind energy for actualization of these objectives.

Maidontoro is a small village part of Plateau State. The people of Maidontoro originally came from hilltops around Foron near Barkin Ladi to settle in a location near Gora which is still called Maidontoro Soho or old Maidontoro before moving to its present day location around the 1900s.

The main occupation of Maidontoro`s five thousand population is farming and provision of casual laborers to the tin mines. The language spoken is Berom.

It takes about 20 minutes to get to the nearest town of Bukuru which is about 25 minutes to Haipang airport and about 20 minutes to the main town of Jos, capital of Plateau State.

“The SIFEL Maidontoro initiative is intended to be used to trigger off a rural based economic development program in a small village at the middle of Nigeria in a way never done before.” says Mr Victor JP Mordi, the CEO of SIFEL Ltd.

He further explains, “I am a renewable energy and farm economy consultant living in the Diaspora in Germany, and I want to use my expertise to grow and develop my hometown of Maidontoro and give something back to my community.”

“It is my vision to use SIFEL as a vehicle for transforming Maidontoro village into a model functioning town like Friedberg Hessen where I presently reside. I want to take advantage of the farm friendly climate by setting up a Bio crop plantation that will produce feed stocks for processing Eco friendly fuel like ethanol and bio diesel. I also want to empower youths by introducing a soap making technology that will take advantage of the large quantities of glycerin that will be produced as a by product of processing non edible oil into fuel into soap and conversion of farm wastes into bio gas and bio fertilizers.”

In July 2009, 25 kilograms of Jatropha Caracas seeds were imported from an Australian company’s farm in Thailand and used for a successful launch of its ten hectares Jatropha pilot plantation in Maidontoro. The seeds produced from the pilot will be used to escalate the plantation to about five thousand hectares over five years period.

Jatropha Caracas is a plant from which seeds can be used to extract oil which can then be processed into bio-diesel.

Project concept is presently on going with the commencement of construction of fish ponds expected to house cat and tilapia fish and development of farm infrastructures. For this Aqua culture initiative, SIFEL plans to build 12 fish ponds capable of housing 60,000 large size tilapia and cat fish as part of the pioneering programmess of using agriculture to put Maidontoro on the economic horizon of the world. SIFEL is involved in this particular programme with a German who plans to process fish from Maidontoro into fillets for super market stores in Germany

“The SIFEL management team presently consists of a community relations and development committee monitored by the traditional ruler or da Gwom Maidontoro, my self as Managing Director, Bernarda Gregor Gulden, a German lady who has become a pillar to the project, and a consultant resident in Vienna, Washington DC” says Victor.

SIFEL Ltd. was formerly known as Geovicher Nigeria Limited, incorporated as a limited liability company and registered with the department of petroleum resources for provision of rig services in the upstream sector of the Nigerian economy and distribution of refined petroleum products in the down stream sector of the Nigerian