Buhari insists on competitive food importation

President Mohammadu Buhari has directed food importers to use their money, directing the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) not to give any official exchange rate to anybody at the expense of local production. President Buhari stated this in press release issued by his Senior Special Assistant on media and publicity, Shehu Garba after the National Food Security Meeting held in Villa.

The statement quoted Mr. President as saying that no kobo of the Nigerian apex bank should be given to any food importer to import food or fertilizers into the country, argued that such support would put the local farmers at a disadvantage position in terms of market price.

President Buhari directed that the CBN should not allocate foreign exchange to importers of food and fertilizers, and by this directive, four companies that have been granted approval to import a total of 262, 000 tons of maize into the country recently may be affected.

He promised to empower local producers in farming and fertilizers production saying that ‘’from only three operating in the country, we have 33 fertilizer blending plants now working. We will not pay a kobo of our foreign reserves to import fertilizer’’

The president advised those that want to import food to source their FOREX without expectation from CBN, asking them to use their money to import and compete with farmers, but not using foreign reserves to bring in compromised food items to divest the effort of local producers.

Also the Minister of Agriculture, Alhaji Sabo in the statement told the Council that the nation expects a bumper harvest of food items despite floods in the north and drought in the south. He quoted the latest market surveys to show that the recent hike in the price of commodities is being reversed.

Early this week some agricultural commodity association have visited the Chief of Staff to the President, Professor Agboola Ibrahim Gambari to brief him on the situation report on the cost of production in Nigeria. Various concerns were raised on the root cause of an increase in food item.