The Federal Government has assured the citizens that the country had enough to eat and that there would be no shortage of food.
The Minister of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Dr. Muhammad Abubakar, gave the assurance yesterday in Abuja, at the fifth edition of the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration’s Scorecard 2015-2017 Series.
The Scorecard Series was organised by the Ministry of Information and Culture to showcase the achievements of President Buhari’s Administration in over seven years of being in office.
Responding to questions after his presentation, Abubakar said the inflationary trend, a global phenomenon, and the flood disaster notwithstanding, the country would not experience food shortage.
“Absolutely, we have enough to eat in this country; there is no shortage of food. There can be an increase in prices. Yes, it is better to have inflation than to have no food. We are self-sufficient in rice and we are the number one producer of rice in Africa and number four in the world”.
“We have enough to eat and we will continue to have enough to eat”, he stressed.
The minister added that the inflationary trend the country was witnessing was not peculiar to Nigeria but a global crisis. He attributed climate change and the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and the Ukraine-Russia war as among the reasons for global inflation.
On the destruction caused by flooding to many farmlands, the minister said farmers were embarking on aggressive dry season planting to mitigate the effects. According to him, the ministry was already distributing fast-growing seeds in areas where flood waters had receded and the moisture there would assist the plants to grow rapidly.
The minister added that they had harnessed some of the flood water which would be used for the dry season farming.
