Agric
Minister: FG Spends 20bilion dollars on Food Importation
Minister
of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, has today said the Nigerian
government had no money to import food and that no nation can be able to feed
its rapidly increasing population with 9 percent interest rate in agriculture.
The
minister, while addressing delegates to the 41st Technical meeting of the
National Council on Agriculture and Rural Development in Kano, said agriculture
being an integral part of human development had been receiving top
priority all over the globe with Europe and America considerably subsidising
it.
He
said the Muhammadu Buhari administration will take some steps in restoring
the lost glory of agriculture which had played a pivotal role in
developing human potentials to meet the ever increasing demands of self
sufficiency in food production adding that with depleted foreign reserve it
would not be realistic for the country to rely solely on massive importation of
food
He
said Africans had been habitually disinclined to adopt a long strategic plan in
facing any eventually almost in all spheres of human endeavour pointing out
that agriculture being the main stay of any promising developing economy
must be accorded the priority it deserved as a way of reducing the nation's
over dependence of oil.
He
however that his ministry was ready to enter into partnership with prominent
industrial agriculturalists and small scale farmers for the purpose of lending
credence to the sector appreciably stressing affirming that it is was
also determined to give out credit to women farmers to access markets for their
products to be exposed and sold on a larger scale.
The
minister of agriculture maintained that the issue of the lingering Fulani
herdsmen and farmers clash had for long been a disturbing trend to the federal
government saying proactive steps would be taken to limit the scope of the
Fulani herdsmen grazing lands to avoid the encroachment that may lead to a
deadly conflict.
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