President Muhammadu Buhari yesterday gave a N20 billion palliative for dry season farming as he flagged off this year’s dry season rice and wheat farming.
The flagging off of the dry season farming expected to be a financial model for small holder farmers in the state took place at Zauro Airstrip in the outskirts of Birnin Kebbi , President Buhari said that the importance of agriculture to the economy cannot be over emphasised hence his administration will diversify the economy to give greater emphasis on agricultural production.
“The importance of agriculture to the economy cannot be over emphasised , economic diversification is the only way to prosperity ,so go back to land and develop agriculture because the era of depending on oil is over “, he said.
He said that agricultural produce such as groundnuts, palm oil, cotton and rubber plantation used to be the mainstay of the economy.
He said: “During this period, the economy of our sub region was built on agricultural activities and our gross domestic product grew steady.”
During that time, Buhari recalled that banks and investment companies were financed from farming surpluses.
“The discovery of oil was expected to compliment our agricultural productivity. But we allowed oil to almost completely replace 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 foreign reserve by limiting our appetite for amputation of goods that we can easily produce locally,” the president said.
He noted that the price of oil had plummeted and that the implication was that there was limited resources available to government at all levels.
“Economic diversification is no longer an option for us, it is the only way to economic momentum and the drive to prosperity,” he added.
According to him, the only way to do this is to go back to the land and develop agriculture.
He said he had high hope on the CBN anchor borrowers’ programme.
Buhari said that the programme had the potential to create million of jobs for the teeming unemployed Nigeria.
He said the scheme would also lift thousands of small holder farmers out of poverty.
Buhari commended Kebbi for taking the lead in the project and its effort in revival of rice and wheat production with other six states of Zamfara , Adamawa ,Jigawa , Ebonyi Gombe and Taraba who have demonstrated and indicated interest for assisting farmers .
He also said that the CBN farmers project has the potentials of creating millions of jobs and addressing poverty amongst the farmers.
The President said that his administration would discourage the importation of food items into the country in order to save about N1 trillion foreign exchange (FOREX) being used annually for that purpose.
He maintained that it made no sense for the country to continue to import food items which could be produced in the country.
The CBN put the amount spent yearly on such importation at over N1trillion.
Earlier, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbe had commended his immediate predecessor Akinwunmi Adesina for innovation he introduced into the nation’s agricultural system and promised to deepen the innovation.
However, Ogbe said that despite the good intention of Adesina, corruption still crept into agriculture under him.
He said: “People supplied sharp sands as fertilizer while fake seeds were sold to farmers. There were companies with no traceable address.”
As a result of this sharp practice, Ogbe said that many struggling farmers lost their monies
Also speaking, the Governor of the CBN, Godwin Emefiele said the apex bank was concerned about the high FOREX
spent on importation of food items that could be locally produced in Nigeria.
He said this informed the decision of the apex court to set aside N40billion from the N220 billion Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Fund for farmers at a single-digit interest rate of 9.0 per cent.
According to him, agricultural commodities and food import bill had averaged over N1trillion in the past two years.
