Farmers Decry Flouting Of Food Importation Directive

Farmers in Rivers State have cried out against the flouting of the directive by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) to stop the importation of food stuffs due to poor implementation policy.
The spokesperson, Farmers and Traders Welfare Association of Nigeria, Rivers State chapter, Azubuike Nchelem made this known in an interview with The Tide, last Saturday, in Port Harcourt.
Nchelem noted that the FEC had in 2017 placed a ban on importation of all food stuffs from outside the country.
He expressed dissatisfaction, saying that for more than one year since the government announced the policy, there does not seem to be any real effort at ensuring that the policy is implemented.
According to him, “the restrictions on food importation seem to be ignored as food is still being imported into the country and it is causing huge loses to farmers, because we do not yet have an effective storage system.”
He expressed regrets that the continued food importation was depriving Nigeria of a chance to improve her Gross Domestic Product (GDP), adding that it was hurting the diversification policy and preventing the promotion of employment, the boosting of local production and ensuring food sufficiency.
According to him, “the poor implementation has put a heavy dent in the nation’s economic improvement policy and caused huge losses in revenue. This, therefore, would surely not encourage local farmers to remain in the farming business.”
Nchelem thus appealed to the government to take proactive steps that would ensure the implementation of the ban directive to ensure that local food production thrives.

Tonye Nria Dappa