‘A Bag Of Rice May Cost N40,000 By Dec’

The Minister of State for Agriculture and Rural Development, Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, has said that Nigeria spends about $22billion a year on importation of food, warning that if Nigerians do not patronise local rice, the cost of foreign stock may jump to N40,000 by December.
Lokpobiri said this at the weekend at a town hall meeting in Yenagoa, the Bayelsa State capital.
He said the reliance on imported food had led to the astronomical rise in price of rice and other commodities, stressing that if Nigerians failed to produce some of the items being imported, before December, the price of rice would skyrocket to N40,000 a bag.
Lokpobiri said there was a projection that by 2050, Nigeria’s population would be 450 million, wondering what would happen then if the people could not feed themselves now.
Lokpobiri said, “For your information, we spend about $22billion a year importing food into Nigeria. We do not have as much dollars to fund the import because of low crude oil price… and that is why you see the price of rice going up.
“Price of rice was between N9,000 and N12,000 some months ago, but it is now about N26,000, and if we don’t start producing, by December, it could be N40,000.
“Rice matures in three months. So, this is a wake-up call for Bayelsa people to take the four farms we have seriously. The Federal Government has four farms in the state in our records. The average land you see in Bayelsa can grow rice, so, the colonial masters were not wrong in their assessment when they said Niger Delta could feed not only Nigeria but the entire West Africa sub-region.
“Unfortunately, agriculture till today, is not a priority of the Niger Delta as far as the state governments are concerned because of oil,” the junior agric minister lamented.
He said the states in the Niger Delta had yet to give priority to agriculture the way the North-West states such as Kebbi, Jigawa, Kano as well as other states like Lagos, Ebonyi, Anambra, have prioritised it.
The minister added that Anambra State, for instance, was not owing salaries despite the fact that it does not have oil but raking in money by exporting vegetables.