By Dipo Olowookere
Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Mr Audu Ogbeh, has said that Federal Government would distribute no fewer than 200 rice mills to millers across the states of the federation.
This, the Minister explained, is to encourage fresh milling of locally produced rice in order to make them more palatable than the imported ones.
Mr Ogbeh said said rice importation has reduced in the last two year, from 580,000 tonnes in 2015 to 58,000 tonnes by 2016 and that by the end of 2017, the difference would have been eliminated because more people now grow rice in Nigeria.
He said the Federal Government was working toward achieving self-sufficiency in staples within the next two years excluding wheat.
The Minister, who addressed journalists in Abuja on Monday, the distribution of the 200 rice mills to millers would save Nigeria about $5 million.
“We have never produced as much grains as we did in the last two years in this country’s’ history.
“We have fed not only Nigeria, we have fed West Africa and there are still thousands of tonnes in people’s warehouses.
“Those who bought grains and stored believing that starvation was near and they will make a killing they are now begging us to take off the grains from them because they are getting stock.
“The only shortfall we have is maize because of the disease called the armyworm.
“We are dealing with that and this planting season, we are going to support farmers to make sure that we bring that disease under control. “We have done amazing things in agriculture in two years, we are still going,” Mr Ogbeh told newsmen.
Adedapo Adesanya