By Aminah Carew
President Muhammadu Buhari has promised that his administration will keep a keen eye on food inflation in the New Year.
He made the promise on Tuesday at the fifth regular meeting with the Presidential Economic Advisory Council held at the State House, Abuja.
The president, who directed the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) not to give money for food importation, said: “Already about seven states are producing all the rice we need. We must eat what we produce.”
He spoke on the strides made in agricultural production by his administration following the programme of diversification from over-reliance on oil if instituted.
The President wondered where the country would have found itself by now in view of the devastating economic crisis brought about by COVID-19, if the country had not embraced agriculture.
“Going back to the land is the way out. We depend on petrol at the expense of agriculture. Now the oil industry is in turmoil. We are being squeezed to produce at 1.5 million barrels a day as against a capacity to produce 2.3 million. At the same time, the technical cost of our production per barrel is high, compared to the Middle East,” he said in a statement issued by his spokesman, Garba Shehu.
The president, who stressed the place of agriculture in the efforts to restore the economy, however, agreed that measures must be put in place to curtail inflation in the country.
“We will continue to encourage our people to go back to the land. Our elite are indoctrinated in the idea that we are rich in oil, leaving the land for the city for oil riches. We are back to the land now. We must not lose the opportunity to make life easier for our people. Imagine what would have happened if we didn’t encourage agriculture and closed the borders. We would have been in trouble,” he said.
The meeting, which was for a review of, and reflections on the global and domestic economy in the outgoing year, was attended by the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, as well as ministers of Finance and Humanitarian Affairs, who agreed on a number of measures.
