Chief Audu Ogbeh, solicits support of lawmakers in protecting citizens Interest on Smuggling.

Chief Audu Ogbeh

 The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, has solicited the support of the lawmakers in protecting citizens’ interest on importation and smuggling through the borders, stating that”

the problem we are having is that a few Nigerians who believe that their well being is superior to that of the entire country sabotage every effort that have been made by the Federal Government to reduce smuggling and importation into the country.  He admitted that some of the problems have to do with our porous borders, especially the Seme boarder.  

 

Chief Audu at the National Assembly soliciting for law makers’ support towards ensuring that all the Universities  of Agriculture presently under the education ministry  are returned to the original plan for effective agricultural manpower added the smuggling of 300 trailers of rice through the Seme border as unacceptable,  thereby called for strong measures to tackle the menace.

 He frowned on the high bill of food import figures  emanating from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) saying “it’s hurting seriously as there is no way and excuse for Nigeria to be spending  the sum of 20billion dollars in importing food as figures with the central bank”.

  Chief Ogbeh further added that “we have indulged in self destruction for a long time, as rice, beans, sorghum, sugar, milk and even Irish potato are imported from South Africa, and we have even gone as far as importing banana from our neighboring country such as Cameroon”.

The Minister urged that “we must make up our mind as a country to know whether we want to satisfy the sentiment of pleasing some of our neighbors at the expense of our own country, or take strong measures to make sure that smuggling stops. Unfortunately we have reached the edge of the hill where our foreign reserve are so low and we can’t import too much and as a matter of fact if we carry on, under five month we will be totally bankrupt, because the demand for foreign exchange in a monthly basis is about 6million dollars for petroleum products and so on and so forth”.

He stressed that as a country we are already facing the challenges of smuggling and importation, local rice millers, have written to pack up their rice mills because they can no longer survive as result of large sums of loans taken to product rice and milk, while on the other hand we still import and smuggle foreign rice into the country through our borders. The local rice cannot compete with the foreign one because they are subsidized by importing foreign countries so that it can be sold at a cheaper price”.

“Now we have to decide what to do and the roadmap in the ministry is quite simple, first of all we have to strive within the shortest possible time to achieve self sufficiency in food production, especially in the major produce like fruits, rice, sugar and milk. Rice we may achieve in 2 years or 2.5, wheat may take us 3-4 years, and if you look at both rice and wheat, the import bill on wheat every year is 5billion dollars and is going to 10 billion dollars in another 15years. Rice is 5million Naira a day and it’s reducing now due to local effort. We also want to deal with import substitution, if we can save 15 to 20billion dollars from food, the demand for dollar will drop and the Naira will appreciate”.

“Nigeria should export food because we have the capacity, we should export rice to West Africa, we should export wheat, more sesames seeds, we should export soyabeans, we should export more cocoa, why are we now number three behind Ivory Coast and Ghana in cocoa production?  Why are we importing palm Oil from Malaysia?  They took the seed from here in 1961, why are we importing all kinds of vegetable oil, most of them are not too good for our health, why are we importing chicken, and  no matter how we try, they still pass through our borders. what you try they get through the boarders.

Then off course we are talking of grains, maize, soya we don’t produce enough which makes the price of chicken so high in the country, in Brazil and the Us, you can buy a whole chicken for one dollar, here it will cost you about 4 dollars or 5, we are talking about improved production of live stock namely, goat, cows, poultry and rams e.t.c, 

The final issue is the textile industry in this country has been destroyed by one or two person who in one night can cross the boarders into the country and sometimes escorted by security men, 20 to  30 trailers of textiles arrive, they make non-sense of the cotton farmers and the local textile mills, that’s why the  textile have all crashed, we haven’t been able to develop the cotton industry, especially the long fiber stable and  the short fiber and our cotton today is 30% cheaper that the in the world market than any other cotton  in the world mainly because of the praline poplin bags that we use for packaging, it destroys the fiber and the quality of our cottons they are even difficult to raise the fiber because they break and then  the smugglers of rice and chicken. 

I feel particularly upset with this people because here we are we tell farmers  to hang out there in the sunlight in the rain to plan grains, they grow and the mills buy their grains and they find out they can’t sell their rice  and they are owing banks large sum of money with this kind of situation and the letter I got this morning  from the CBN, this millers are getting very uncomfortable and threaten to shut down their mills  and face their destiny,  I mush have to appeal to you distinguish members , we will all have to join hands together to make this work, we have to protect our people, protect ourselves because if we allow agriculture to collapse and oil and gas is gone, if we have nothing to export or product, then I wonder where we will migrate, if Nigeria goes hungry how many boats will carry us to the UK and how many of our children will  have to cross the deserts in search of jobs they will never find,  I mean the young men and women have taken the desert to Libya and many of them have died on the way , to  create jobs which our own revenue have created jobs in those countries, because we import too much , so briefly this is where we are, we thank you  for inviting us here  today and we assure you that we shall get serious and to work, we have been briefed.