World Bank: Neglect of Agriculture is Disastrous for Nigeria
The neglect of agriculture over the years because of the oil economy could be a disaster for Nigeria, a senior agricultural economist with the World Bank, Dr. Adetunji Oredipe has said.
Oredipe said Nigeria could be making as much as $10bn yearly from commodities such as in palm oil, cocoa, groundnut it the country had planned for it.
In a keynote address at the agriculture summit Africa held in Abuja Thursday, he said it was sad that Nigeria is now one of the biggest importers of food in the world.
According to him, Nigeria imported wheat worth $965m, $39.7m on rice and $100.2m on rice in 2016.
He described as financially irresponsible the decision to spend $655m on fish importation.
Oredipe said such imports cannot be sustained, adding that Nigeria is simply living on borrowed time.
He said, “Nigeria was also the largest exporter of palm oil in the world and accounted for 27 per cent of the global export volume for palm oil.
“Indonesia alone recorded US$16.5bn, 54.5 per cent of total palm oil exports. Unfortunately, Nigeria is not listed among the first 15 as at this moment.”
He opined that what Nigeria needs to do was to transform the country into agriculturally industrialized economy.
He also advised that in doing this government needs to understand how difficult it is to produce, adding that what is needed is to specialize in certain areas of agriculture and focus on that.
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