According to President Muhammadu Buhari it’s time for Nigeria to embrace agriculture.
Speaking on Friday, Buhari said crude oil and gas exports would no longer be sufficient as the country’s major revenue earner.
“It’s time to go back to the land. We must face the reality that the petroleum we had depended on for so long will no longer suffice. We campaigned heavily on agriculture, and we are ready to assist as many as want to go into agricultural ventures,” a statement by his spokesman Femi Adesina quoted him as saying.
Buhari also pledged that his administration would cut short the long bureaucratic processes that Nigerian farmers had to go through to get any form of assistance from government.
He told the IFAD President that improvement of the productivity of farmers, dry season farming, and creative ways to combat the shrinking of the Lake Chad will also receive the attention of his administration.
He added that foreign exchange would be conserved for machinery and other items needed for production, instead of using it to import things like toothpicks.
He spoke while granting audience to the Nigerian-born President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, Dr. Kanayo Nwanze, inside the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
