Following moves by some presidential candidates to open land borders to allow the importation of rice among other banned food items, if elected, the Forum for Agriculture Commodity Associations of Nigeria has warned politicians to stop playing politics with food security in the country.
The body maintained that while they understand the need for candidates to put forward their value propositions to the electorates during campaigns in order to solicit votes, they said, it is not in the interest of the nation for anyone to politicize agriculture as it portends great danger to the wellbeing of the nation and its food security.
The statement signed by the National President of the forum Alh Sadiq Deware noted farmers under the aegis of the association have been direct beneficiaries of the positive impact of the well-thought-out policy that led to the closure of the land borders and the eventual ban on the importation of rice.
He said the impact reopening of land borders and resumption of importation of rice would have on rice farmers who have deployed massively to farm following the ban on the importation of rice including medium and large-scale processors who have invested heavily in setting up processing facilities that are already up and running will be unquantifiable.
The body said “we wish to implore proponents on both sides of the divide to consider the advantages vis-a-viz disadvantages of either position in the overall interest of the nation”
They further mentioned that given the current security situation in the country, the opening of land borders would further encourage a massive inflow of small arms and light weapons into the country,
Deware mentioned that the lethal blow the uncontrolled importation of textile materials had on our textile industries is still fresh in their minds, as well as the carcases of moribund textile industries in Kaduna and other parts of Nigeria are staring us in the face saying it is their hope that history would not repeat itself in our lifetime.
He stated ‘ it is given that no nation can boast of being sovereign if it still depends on other nations to feed its population. We fear that the if the matter of lifting the ban on rice importation is not treated with all the caution it deserves, the current gains by the current administration that has ramped up production, facilitated the establishment of modern processing facilities and led to significant savings on foreign exchange hitherto spent on importation would be reversed or completely eclipsed. This would be a sad commentary.”
“As an apolitical body of professionals whose sole passion is to ensure the end-to-end development of agriculture that guarantees food and nutrition security, we are poised to support any policy thrust that is farmer-friendly and is for the overall best interest of the nation.”
The commodity associations pledged to continue to work assiduously with any government in power and commit to promoting all policies that would better position all value chain players in the agricultural space to become formidable sources of economic diversification.
