Minister of State for Agriculture and
Rural Development, Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, has warned that Nigeria
must start producing rice by December 2016 or risk having the produce
hit N40,000 per bag.
Lokpobiri said this at the weekend during a town hall meeting in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State.
He said, “For your information, we spend
about $22bn a year importing food into Nigeria. We know how many more
dollars they bought and that is why you see the price of rice going up.
“Price of rice was N12,000 some months
ago, but it is now about N26,000 and if we don’t start producing, by
December it could be N40,000.
“Rice matures in three months. So, this
is a wake up call for Bayelsa people to take the four farms we have
seriously. The federal government has four farms in the state in our
records.
“The average land you see in Bayelsa can
grow rice, so the colonial masters were not wrong in their assessment
when they said Niger Delta could feed not only Nigerian but also the
entire West Africa sub-region.
“Unfortunately, agriculture till today,
is not a priority of the Niger Delta as far as the state governments are
concerned because of oil.”
He lamented that states in the Niger
Delta had yet to give priority to agriculture the way the North-West
states such as Kebbi, Jigawa, Kano as well as other states like Lagos,
Ebonyi, Anambra had done.
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