Buhari Reaffirmed the Need for Nigerians to Return to Agriculture

Buhari Reaffirmed the Need for Nigerians to Return to Agriculture

President Muhammadu Buhari has on Tuesday reaffirmed the need for Nigerians to return to agriculture that his regime would continue to encourage Nigerians to go back to agriculture.

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According to a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, he said President spoke about this at the fifth regular meeting with the Presidential Economic Advisory Council at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

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In the statement which was titled, ‘President Buhari: Government will wrestle food inflation in the coming year’ Shehu said the President has given his words that his regime will keep a keen eye on food inflation in 2021 and has given a directive to the Central Bank of Nigeria not to give any money for food importation.

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He said Buhari directed that the CBN “must not give money to import food. Already about seven states are producing all the rice we need. We must eat what we produce.”

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Shehu said the president wondered where the country would have found itself by now in view of the devastating economic crisis brought about by COVID-19 if the country had not embraced agriculture.

“Going back to the land is the way out. We depend on petrol at the expense of agriculture. Now the oil industry is in turmoil. We are being squeezed to produce at 1.5 million barrels a day as against a capacity to produce 2.3 million.

“At the same time, the technical cost of our production per barrel is high, compared to the Middle East production,” the President was quoted as saying,” the president was quoted as saying.

“We are back to the land now. We must not lose the opportunity to make life easier for our people. Imagine what would have happened if we didn’t encourage agriculture and closed the borders. We would have been in trouble,” Buhari noted.