Tribune Nigeria spends N674bn on rice, sugar, fish annually · Written by Biola Azeez - Ilorin · Friday, 05 July 2013 01:01 MINISTER of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr Akinwunmi Adesina, has said that Nigeria spends N360 billion to import rice, N217 billion to import sugar and N97 billion on fish importation annually. Speaking at the inauguration of a Cassava Mechanisation and Agro-processing (CAMAP) project in Ilorin on Thursday, the minister said Nigeria’s food import bill was too high, adding that the country spends a lot of money to import comodities that could be abundantly produced in the country. “These acts are hurting farmers, displacing local production and creating unemployment,” he said. The minister said the CAMAP project was capable of generating about 600,000 metric tonnes of raw cassava roots from farmers and an expanded market of over 150,000 metric tonnes of high quality cassava flour from agro-processors when fully implemented. Corroborating the minister, the national chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, who was the chairman of the occasion, said that Africa had no reason to be poor, adding that the Nigerian small holder farmers had suffered and faced enormous challenges due to lack of access to inputs and tools to advance their efforts from susbsistence farming to commercial production. Alhaji Tukur thus urged the government and rich individuals in Africa and Nigeria to support organisations like the African Agriculture Technology Foundation (AATF), who, he said, were making strides to support agriculture through access to appropriate technology to guarantee better yields for Nigerian farmers. Also speaking, Executive Director of National Centre for Agricultural Mechanisation (NCAM), Mr Ike Azogu, said CAMAP was expected to increase cassava yield from the present average of less than 15 tonnes per hectare to about 30 tonnes per hectare with minimal manual labour by farmers. Mr Azogu also said the CAMAP initiative was a further boost to the government policy of cassava flour inclusion in wheat flour. The director, who said the project would create employment opportunities for unemployed youths, added that it would improve cassava competitiveness in the country. He, therefore, appealed to the federal, state and local government to buy into the project so that it could be replicated in all cassava growing states of the country. Also speaking on the occasion, Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed of Kwara State said 100 cassava farmers in the state and 50 in Osun State were benefitting, and commended the AATF and its partners on the successes already recorded.
Posted on: Fri, 05 Jul 2013 08:58:44 +0000