The Federal
Executive Council (FEC) presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari has
approved the sum of N5, 567, 314, 541.76 for the third quarter soil
erosion control accelerated intervention projects for six states.....
The states are Kano, Sokoto, Ondo, Osun, Enugu and Bayelsa.
Special Adviser to the President on Media
and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, disclosed this at the post-FEC
briefing in company with the Minister of Agriculture and Rural
Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh and Minister of State (Aviation), Heidi
Sirika.
Sirika said FEC approved bilateral air
services agreement with Canada as part of efforts to boost relations
between both countries, including trade and commerce.
“It would be a standard agreement to facilitate the movement of people and business transactions,” he said
Ogbe, on his part, said FEC gave the
Institute of Agricultural Research, Ahmadu Bello University (ABU),
Zaria, the nod to develop foundation seeds for maize.
He said the research was at the cost of
N165 million for 30 tons of foundation seeds multiplied by 265 tons of
improved seeds, which is to be given to seeds companies to multiply.
The minister said one of the problems facing maize production in the country was lack of the right quality.
According to him, this is responsible for the yields per hectare being among the lowest in the world
Ogbe said the council also discussed the disturbing trend of smuggling, which is impacting negatively on the country.
“We have to deal with that because while
we are making a great deal of progress in our production of grains,
smugglers are trying to compromise the successes we have achieved.
“I can give you some figures. Between
September 2015 and now, rice importation through the ports dropped from
644,131 tons to 20,000 tons in September, which means that by the end of
this year, to the early part of next year, we can literally say we are
close to total self-sufficiency in rice. On the other hand, in Republic
of Benin, rice importation has increased to 1.33 million tons because
they don’t eat parboiled rice; they eat white rice. So, every grain of
rice landing there is heading for Nigeria through smuggling and some of
it also come in through Niger Republic. These are issues to deal with
because we want local rice production to meet our needs and we are
creating jobs.
“There are at least 12.2 million farmers
in the country and they are enjoying life the way they haven’t before.
So these are the issues we raised today,” he said.
Ogbe also said the government would
intensify its onslaught on smugglers, as the country was currently
losing over N5 billion to the nefarious activities.”
He blamed smugglers for the delay in setting up of rice mills.“They (millers) spend
money to mill the rice and the smugglers dump them at N12,500. The
smugglers can dump at N12,500 because they are subsidised from Thailand.
They are determined to see that we don’t succeed. We can’t do that
because we can’t subsidise to that level.We say if everything goes well
without the smugglers, our people should be able to sell at N13, 500 per
bag,” he stated.
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