Fasten your belts, hunger continues until 2018, FG tells Nigerians

Nigerians have to fasten their belts as there is no immediate solution yet to food shortage until 2018.

Chief Audu Ogbeh, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, made this known while playing host to Anambra state governor, Chief Willie Obiano, in Abuja.

In a statement he issued on Monday, Ogbeh urged Nigerians to exercise more patience, promising that the food shortage problems in the country would soon be a thing of the past.

According to Ogbeh, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, is willing to assist state governments to ensure that the target is met.

He said government has assisted Anambra state in fish fingerlings production and is ready to help in other areas of the sector that would help in enhancing food production across the country, adding that the ministry is looking at adding 10 per cent soya beans into cassava to enrich it with more protein and increase its nutrition value for children.

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He said that about 15,000 broken down tractors, out of the 30,000 available in the country would be rehabilitated to support farmers in Nigeria as the government works hard to meet its food sufficiency target by 2018.

Recall that Ogbeh recently said that Nigerians should rejoice for being better than Venezuela.

He had said, “We are fully aware that there is a major concern in the country for food self-sufficiency in the country and that there is crisis in many families as a result of serious shortage of food.

“But we are working hard ‎and thank God that ours has not become as bad as one South American country, which was also a major oil producing country. By that I mean Venezuela, which situation is definitely a 100 times worse than ours.

In March the Minister had also informed Nigerians that, as part of government efforts to boost quality of livestock and curtail herdsmen/farmers clash, grasses had been imported from Brazil by the Federal Government.

“We are producing massive hectares of grasslots for the consumption of cattle; we have received these grasses from Brazil and we are growing them in massive quantities,” he said.

 

By Ebere Ndukwu

 

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