President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday said
crude oil and gas exports would no longer be sufficient as the
country’s major revenue earner.
He said time has therefore come for Nigerians to do more than pay mere lip service to agriculture.
According to a statement by his Special
Adviser on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, the President spoke
while granting audience to the Nigerian-born President of the
International Fund for Agricultural Development, Dr. Kanayo Nwanze,
inside the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
“It’s
time to go back to the land. We must face the reality that the
petroleum we had depended on for so long will no longer suffice. We
campaigned heavily on agriculture, and we are ready to assist as many as
want to go into agricultural ventures,” Adesina quoted the President as
saying.
Buhari also pledged that his
administration would review the long bureaucratic process that Nigerian
farmers had to go through to get assistance from the government.
He told the IFAD President that
improvement of the productivity of farmers, dry season farming and
creative ways to combat the shrinking of the Lake Chad would also
receive his administration’s attention.
“There is so much to be done. We will try
and articulate a programme and consult organisations like IFAD for
advice,” the President said.
Buhari added that foreign exchange would
be conserved for machinery and other items needed for production,
instead of using it to import things like toothpicks.
Nwanze congratulated Buhari on his
victory in the general elections and assured him that IFAD was ready to
assist Nigerian farmers to boost their activities.
IFAD is an international organisation established in 1978 to address issues of agriculture and poverty alleviation.
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