The Federal Government yesterday said it has no money to import food, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, has said.
The minister, who announced this at the 41st Technical Meeting of the National Council on Agriculture and Rural Development, at the Coronation Hall, Government House, Kano, said agriculture as an integral part of human development, received top priority all over the globe with Europe and America considerably subsidising it.
According to him, the Buhari administration was compelled to take some steps in restoring the lost glory of agriculture which had played a pivotal role in developing human potentials to meet the ever increasing demands of self-sufficiency in food production, adding that with the depleted foreign reserves it would not be realistic for the country to rely solely on massive importation of food.
He said Africans had been habitually disinclined to adopt a long strategic plan in facing any eventuality almost in all spheres of human endeavour.
The government, Ogbeh further stressed was determined to give out credit to women farmers to access markets for their products to be exposed and sold on a larger scale.
On the recurring Fulani herdsmen/farmers clash, the minister maintained that this had long been a disturbing trend to the federal government, saying proactive steps would be taken to limit the scope of the Fulani herdsmen grazing lands to avoid the encroachment that usually “leads to deadly conflicts.”
