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Nigeria spends about $22bn a year on importation of food into the country, the Minister of State for Agriculture and Rural Development, Senator Heineken Lokpobiri has revealed.
Read also: (There may be no food next year – Gov. Ortom)
Lokpobiri hinted this on Saturday at a town hall meeting in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, where he said a price of a bag of rice may shoot up to N40,000 by December if there is no increased local production.
“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 may be 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 wakeup 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,” Lokpobiri explained.
