The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, on
Tuesday said the President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration has created new
set of millionaires through Agriculture.
Mohammed, who made the assertion while featuring on Channels
Television Programme, claimed that the feat was achieved through policies.
According to Mohammed, “What this government has done is
that in the area of agriculture, we have created a new set of millionaires in
Kebbi, Imo, Jigawa, Kano states so much that today, these new farmers have been
empowered and we have made agriculture quite attractive to them”.
Commenting on prices of food items, he said, “In any country
where you lack basic infrastructure like roads, railways, power, you are going
to have a situation where the cost of food would go up and that is why we are
investing in infrastructural development.
“On rail line, we have commenced the construction of the
150km per hour Lagos-Ibadan rail. We have been able to put down our $1.2bn
counterpart funding that would make us do also Kano-Kaduna-Calabar and Port
Harcourt line.
“By the time these things are put in place, traders would be
able to bring tomatoes by train from Kano to Lagos would be able to bring food
from the middle belt and that is what is going to make your food cheap. As we
speak today, what government is trying to do is how do we subsidize
transportation of these food items to bring them down. So if you don’t have
power, roads, railways in any part of the world, the cost of food would go up”.
He maintained that the Buhari-led government has been able
to move the economy out of recession in the area of agricultural, Manufacturing
and Solid Mineral sectors.
Mohammed said, “Despite these austere times, we actually did
move out of recession in manufacturing, agriculture and solid minerals”
He explained that Nigeria has been able to move out of
recession in the manufacturing sector because of government’s commitment to
“invest in infrastructure, to improve the ease of doing business and unlike the
previous administration where 16% was spent on infrastructure in 2015, we spent
30% in 2017 and that is why you can see that we are climbing out of recession.”
By Seun Opejobi
