Minister of State for Agriculture, Lokpobiri Heinekein has expressed concerns about a possible hike in the price of rice, if Nigeria fails to begin the process of producing its own rice. He said that there is a possibility that the cost of a
bag of rice may shoot up to about N40,000 by December this year. In his words;
"For your information, we spend about $22bn a year importing food into Nigeria. We know how many more dollars they bought and that is why you see the price of rice going up. Price of rice was may be N12,000 some months ago, but it is now about N26,000 and if we don’t start producing, by December it could be N40,000.
Rice matures in three months. So, this is a
wake up call for Bayelsa people to take the four farms we have seriously. The
federal government has four farms in the state in our records. The average land
you see in Bayelsa can grow rice, so the colonial masters were not wrong in
their assessment when they said Niger Delta could feed not only Nigerian but
also the entire West Africa sub-region. Unfortunately, agriculture till today,
is not a priority of the Niger Delta as far as the state governments are
concerned because of oil”he said
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