Stakeholders deride FG’s promise to crash food prices in 2 weeks

Several players in the nation’s agricultural food chain have described the recent promise by the federal government to crash the prices of rice and other foodstuffs within next two weeks as impractical and unrealistic.
 
Audu Ogbeh
Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development
Firing the first salvo, Professor Victor Chude, President, Soil Science Society of Nigeria (SSSN), said Nigerians are too sophisticated to fall for such a cheap gimmick, stressing that the possibility of witnessing crashing food prices in two weeks is non-existent.

While dismissing the promise as a political and ambitious statement, Chude said there is a distinct possibility of prices crashing in the long run if the right actions are taken and Implemented by the government.

He said, "Remember the committee had listed the high cost of transportation, poor infrastructure, particularly poor state of our roads, high cost of fuel, bottlenecks on our highways, multiple control post, ravaging pest and diseases, among others, are the reasons for the high cost of food commodities.

"So, until all these are tackled, I will say it is very ambitious and not feasible. Except they are able to tackle all these challenges within the set time, which I do not think is possible, then it is indeed an ambitious statement.

"Also, I am aware that the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, has laid down strategies to addressing the invasion of Army Worms across the country. So, all these could help address the issue of high food cost".

Joining his voice to that of Chude, Chief Daniel Okafor, Vice President of All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN) asked Nigerians to discard the idea and not to entertain any illusion because he can not see the likelihood of food prices crashing in the next two weeks.

"I do not know the method they will use to achieve that. However, I say good luck to them. If they want to do magic, they should release the budget, but until that is done, there is nothing they can do. Until they release and implement the budget, whatever they want to do, good luck to them".

Although he was reluctant to speak on the issue, Dr Victor Iyama, National President, Federation of Agricultural Commodity Association of Nigeria (FACAN), ventured that "Maybe they have facts on how they want to go about that but we are marketers and farmers and do not know the details. So, we will have to wait and see. There must be something they know that we don't. So, until then, I will rather reserve my comments".

Recently, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), indicated in its annual reports that the nation is still being weighed down by soaring prices of food stuffs in the face of rising inflation.


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