The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Mr. Mohammed Sabo Nanono, has stated the decision of the federal government to shut the country’s borders has started paying off with the resuscitation of many rice milling plants.
Nanono said that the policy also impacted positively on the nation’s agricultural sector’s contribution to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), maintaining that the directive to shut the borders was one of the best decisions ever taken by a sitting administration.
He noted that policy would set Nigeria on the right path of achieving self sufficiency in food production while also serve as a catalyst for agro-allied and industrial development
The minister in a chat with THISDAY said: “The policy did a lot especially in regards to the production of rice in two important areas. One is in the area of direct production of rice.
Nigerian farmers were given incentives to grow more rice; secondly, our milling plants were just lying idle because of smuggled imported foreign rice. One of the reasons why we put emphasis on rice is that a lot of imported rice in our neighbouring countries were being shipped into Nigeria and that is the only market and these rice are not produced in Togo, Niger Republic or Benin Republic, No? They were from Thailand India or elsewhere and most of them are over 10 years old in production. So when we closed down the borders, this rice movement was gravely affected imported rice as all our milling plants started going full blast.
“You know, if you take in Kano for instance which is the center of these processing plants, there are now about 52 rice milling plants in Kano doing about 400 tons per day and in addition to employing people between 200 to 400 and that is something for the country and not only that, you know, it integrate the country more in terms of both production of rice or movement of rice from the North to the South.
“I was particularly happy when I met one of the largest rice producing communities in Kano, called Kura. I met some groups of rice traders from Lagos with their trailers coming to pick up local rice and they do not even see it as imported rice and that was a surprise to me. And for many Nigerians, I realize that most people in the South prefer the local rice than imported rice and ironically, in the North, where we are producing the local rice, because of smuggling business, we prefer to market the smuggled rice than the local rice that is the irony.”