‘Nigeria Losing $30bn To Imported Food Items Annually’

THE Fedeeral Government has been advised to invest more in the areas of agricul­tural development and food processing to save Nigeria an estimated $30 billion expend­ed on importation of foreign foods and agro-allied prod­ucts annually.

Foremost industrialist and President/CEO of Erisco Foods Limited, Chief Eric Umeofia, who stated this in an interview with Daily Sun in his Lagos office decried such huge capital flight aris­ing from Nigerians; support for farmers and agro-allied processors in China and India to the detriment of the local economy. He urged the Mu­hammadu Buhari administra­tion to demonstrate the neces­sary courage to ban imports of foods and to encourage the growth and sustenance of indigenous investments in the agricultural and food pro­cessing business.

“We need to diversify the economy more into agricul­ture. We have about $30billion to save annually if we patron­ise made-in-Nigerian foods and made-in-Nigerian agric products,” Umeofia said.

“We are losing so much depending on foreign prod­ucts and that is not the way to develop because some of the foods imported into the country are very harmful to the health of our citizens and our regulatory agencies like NAFDAC and Customs are not doing enough to check what comes in,” he added.

He lamented that many lo­cal food processing firms are finding it hard to sell off their goods owing to the presence of large volumes of cheap and substandard products in Ni­gerian market. He called on the economic team of Presi­dent Muhammadu Buhari to develop a home-grown eco­nomic programme that suits the peculiarities of the coun­try and end the trend of trying to deploy foreign economic theories to solve the country’s problems.

Advertise here