Investment
By Kudirat Musa
Abuja, Dec. 20, 2018 (NAN) Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, Minister of State for Agriculture and Rural Development, has commended the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) for supporting the nation’s agricultural value chain development with 500 million dollars.
Mr George Oji, the Special Adviser on Media to the Minister, disclosed this in a statement on Thursday in Abuja.
Lokpobiri gave the assurance when Ms Ndine Gbossa, the Country Representative of IFAD, visited him in his office.
He said that the Federal Government took the partnership with IFAD very seriously because of IFAD’s role in Nigeria.
“The IFAD fund has played critical role in making Nigeria the highest producer of rice and cassava in Africa.
“We take our partnership with IFAD very seriously and we appreciate the investments and the support that we are getting from you.
“Today, Nigeria is rated as the highest producer of rice and cassava in Africa, courtesy of IFAD intervention and the Anchor Borrowers Programme.
“This has helped Nigerians to answer the clarion call of this administration to go back to the farms to produce what we eat and eat what we produce,” he said.
The minister disclosed that Nigeria used to spend a whooping sum of 5 million dollars for the importation of rice every day but that through new policy programmes by the ministry and the intervention of partners like IFAD the figure had drastically reduced.
Lokpobiri expressed regret that Federal Government’s effort to reduce the importation of foreign rice into the country was being frustrated by the activities of the neighbouring country such as Benin Republic through the abuse of the ECOWAS protocol.
“The challenge we have with our neighbours is that because of the extant ECOWAS protocol, people will dump their rice products in their region and re-bag them and bring them into Nigeria.
“The reason is that under the ECOWAS protocol, any goods produced within the sub region can have free access to any market within the region.
“Based on that, those from Thailand would go to Benin Republic with their parboiled rice and then re-bag them as though they were produce in Benin Republic and then smuggled them into Nigeria.’’
He said that this had been denying the people of Benin Republic the opportunity to grow rice and then benefit from the Nigerian market “because of that, Nigeria has engaged the government of Benin Republic up to the presidential level.’’
“The President had to invite the President of Benin Republic to engage him because we are neighbours, let’s see how we can work together and curb this issue of smuggling,’’ he said.
The statement quoted the IFAD Country Respresentative, that the Executive Board of the fund recently approved additional financing for Nigeria in the Value Chain Development programme to the value of 89 million dollars.
“This has brought the total investment in this programme to 228 million dollars, for supporting rice and cassava production.
“This is in addition to another 60 million dollars for supporting the Niger Delta Youth known as the Alive for Niger Delta fund,’’ she said.
She said that Nigeria remained a very important partner of IFAD and had also attracted the highest investment in Africa, noting that, “altogether, we have investment in Nigeria that is worth half a billion dollars.’’
“Nigeria is one of the biggest investment countries for IFAD, so it is a very important country.”
“IFAD has set aside another 100 million dollars for investment in Nigeria for 2019 but is applying caution to know the outcome of the coming election before putting pen on paper for the fund,’’ she said. (NAN)
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Edited by Grace Yussuf