The Federal Government is contemplating closing its borders with neighbouring countries to stem the tide of smuggling of foreign rice into the country through land borders.
Speaking with some select journalists on the achievements of the present administration in the last two years, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, gave the warning in Abuja. Ogbeh stated that government would no longer fold its arms and watch the fortune of local rice farmers being frittered away by those that had continued in the illicit deal of smuggling rice into the country.
He disclosed that the present administration was determined to achieve self-sufficiency in rice production by 2018 as it would not allow any act of sabotage to truncate the dream. “We believe they are determined to sabotage the efforts that we are making to guarantee self-sufficiency in rice and to save foreign exchange, which we don’t have.
“They insist on bringing in rice through the land borders, avoiding the duties and the levies we put on them and they are definitely bent on sabotaging our efforts and we are getting increasingly unhappy with them. “And I must say that very soon, if they persist, we will take very nasty measures against them,” he said.
The minister also warned that Nigeria, being part of the ECOWAS Treaty on Trade, does not mean that the country’s economy should be delivered as a sacrificial lamb to unscrupulous business people
