Nigeria will export rice by 2017, Says CBN Acting Director

Even as many Nigerian homes can no longer afford rice due to its high price, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is confident Nigeria will begin to export the product before the end of 2017.

CBN Acting Director, Corporate Communication, Mr Isaac Okoroafor, made this promise on Tuesday during a sensitization/awareness for farmers in Bayelsa State on the apex bank’s Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (ABP).

Okoroafor who noted that the CBN’s ABP had started yielding fruits, claimed that with the advancement so far recorded by the CBN in its agricultural financing policies, the country by next year will have to be exporting rice.

“We started a pilot programme in Kebbi State with 78,000 farmers, cultivating an average of one hectare and that was when President Muhammadu Buhari launched the programme in March last year. The programme was to enable farmers to plant three times a year – two dry seasons cropping and one rainy season cropping. I am telling you now that Kebbi State has exceeded one million tonnes of rice.

“Not only Kebbi, Ebonyi State has keyed into it. We were there last week and Ebonyi is to give us over 1.2million tonnes of rice in one year. They are harvesting now, they are bagging and they are milling. Nigerians are booking their Christmas rice in Abakaliki.

“Abia State has ordered rice from Ebonyi State Government. Other states are keying in. In Kebbi, Jigawa, Sokoto, Cross River, rice is coming up. Nigerians are planting rice, producing rice. You need to taste Nigerian rice, it is fresh. Not the nine-year-old rice from Vietnam, Thailand and India. Let us feed ourselves. Our rice is healthier; it is not preserved with chemicals,” Okoroafor said.

According to him, Anambra, Niger, Jigawa, Kebbi, Sokoto, Cross River and Ebonyi just to ensure that this is not another talk show. We have seen the harvest of rice which brought me to say that the harvest of rice for this year has so far outstripped our projections.

“By the end of 2017, Nigeria will not only meet our national demands which are between six and seven tonnes per year, but we will exceed it that we will have rice to export to other countries.”

Recall that the Ebonyi State Government had recently announced plans to enforce the ban on the sale of foreign rice in markets and other outlets in the state, as a measure to ensure that residents patronised home-grown Ebonyi Rice.