Five Years Ago, We Imported $5M of Rice Daily, Now We Produce 90% Of The Rice We Consume - Osinbajo

The vice-presidential candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress, Prof Yemi Osinbajo, has said Nigeria no longer records $5m daily importation of rice.
Osinbajo, in his opening statement during the just concluded vice-presidential debate at Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja, noted that the Federal Government had made significant development in its social investment policy, including railway, agriculture and small business finance.

The incumbent Vice-President said, “We have a social investment policy; possibly the largest ever in the history of our country. N500bn is what we’re investing in every cycle.
“In the area of agriculture, barely five years ago, this country was importing $5m of rice every single day. Today, we are down to 90 per cent less. We’re producing 90 per cent of the rice that we consume and we’re importing only two per cent of what we used to import.
“At the same time, there are other forms of produce. Sorghum, for example, is fast replacing barley. We’re also in cashew and practically every other area. Agriculture in Nigeria today has certainly gone up in leaps and bounds.”
According to him, under the N-Power scheme, the government is employing 500,000 graduates, who are in every local government.
He added that the government, through its home-grown school feeding programme, had 9.2 million children as beneficiaries in 26 states on a daily basis.
Osinajo said, “Today, we have begun perhaps one of the largest infrastructure projects in our country. We’re building railways between Lagos and Kano. We expect that the first phase of that medium-gauge railway — that is, the Lagos-Ibadan part of it — will be ready in January.
“At the same time, we’ve done the Aladga-Warri. Kano-Maradi rail, which is one of the oldest commercial routes in the country has just been given. And the KfW, the German Bank, is sponsoring that rail.
“We’re also looking at the Lagos-Calabar rail. And these are some of just the rail routes. In every state of Nigeria today, we have a major road project.”
According to him, 16 years after the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway was abandoned, “practically every day,” the government is building the expressway, which he described “the major road out of the commercial nerve centre of Nigeria.”
He added, “We also have what is called the Government Empowerment and Enterprise Scheme, which is a microcredit loan. We have Marketmoni, which is for small businesses and then we have the TraderMoni which is for petty traders.
“So far, we have done about 1.4 million petty traders and market people in all. Under that same SIP, we have the Conditional Cash Transfer Scheme, taking at least 400,000 people so far out of poverty.”