President Muhammadu Buhari Tuesday in Birnin Kebbi said that Nigeria
can’t no longer sustain the importation of rice and other food items
which it has capacity to produce in commercial quantities, saying that
the diversification of the economy was a necessity.
The president spoke while launching the Central Bank of Nigeria,
CBN’s Anchor Borrowers’ Programme and the commencement of the dry season
farming in the state.
He stated that the dwindling oil prices in the international market
has made it compulsory for his government to diversify the economy and
intensify effort at reinvigorating agriculture.
The president recalled that agriculture was the mainstay of the
economy before the discovery of oil, stressing that efforts must be
geared towards bringing back the glory days.
He said: “The importance of agriculture in the economy can not be
over emphasised. Prior to the advent of oil, our country survived on
agriculture production.”
He said: “During this period, the economy our sub region was built
on agricultural activities and our gross domestic product grew steady.
“The discovery of oil was expected to compliment our agriculture
productivity. But we allowed oil to almost completely replaced it. Our
current trend at the international oil market had brought to fore the
urgent need to diversify both the productive and revenue based of our
economy and to conserve our foreing reserve by limiting our apetite for
imporation of goods that we can easily produce locally.
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