Nigeria to begin yam exports in June
Chief Audu Ogbeh, Minister of
Agriculture and Rural Development, has said export Nigeria will start exporting
yams to Europe by June 29, 2017.
He said this in Abuja while
speaking with journalists, stating that within the next two years, Nigeria’s
agricultural sector would have improved.
“In another two years, we will be
back on the world stage where every country had recognized and expected Nigeria
to live up to the name – Major Food Producer. On the 29th of June this year,
the first container of yams will be leaving the shores of Nigeria for UK.
“Yes, we have been dealing with
vegetables and a lot of other produce already and we will continue to be
selling pulses mainly beans and cowpeas to India. We will soon be back
exporting cocoa again on a large scale, although we are exporting very little
now; and cashew nuts to Vietnam which we intend to start processing here very
soon.
“The processed cashew nuts will
be exported to Wal-Mart and other major supermarkets across the globe. We are
on our way. It is just about time. The beautiful thing is that Nigerians make
me proud. In spite of the trauma they have been through, their response to the
call by the President to return to agriculture has been absolutely successful –
Young and old, civil servants, military men, journalists, everybody is on his
way back to agriculture.
“We only have the challenge, now,
of giving them what they need, and we will definitely meet that challenge.”
On the exportation of processed food
as against raw farm produce, Ogbeh said Nigeria had all it takes to effectively
play in the international processed food market, stressing that most of what
Nigerians ate were already processed foods.
“We have to process what we grow.
There are very few things we eat raw especially vegetables and fruits. But
rice, sugar, milk, sorghum, millet, cassava – among those items; we are almost
there.”
This Audu Ogbe talks too much.
ReplyDeleteTo think that we replaced an Adesina with an Ogbe. What anachronism