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Tag: Minister of Agriculture

  • FG to establish commodities’ certification centres – Ogbeh

    FG to establish commodities’ certification centres – Ogbeh

    The Minister of Agriculture, Chief Audu Ogbeh, said the Federal Government will soon establish commodities’ certification centres across the six geo-political zones to aid certification and standardization.

    ‎Ogbeh made the disclosure in Kano on Monday during the flag-off of the nationwide advocacy on agricultural quality control and standardization.

    The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the minister was represented at the occasion ‎by a Director in the Ministry, Dr. Aminu Babandi.

    He said that the Federal  Government received 48 notifications from European Union on aflatoxin and other contaminants in the last one year.‎
    ‎
    He said that the country received ‎48 notifications between July 2016 and June 2017 from EU on export goods due to aflatoxin and many other contaminants either biological or chemical.‎

    “We will establish commodities certification centres across the zones to aid certification, standardization and traceability.
    ‎
    “The ban on dry beans from Nigerian origin by EU therefore geared our ‎attention to what is an eye opener that we have actually been consuming poison unknowingly,” he said.

    Ogbeh said that Nigerians deserved good, safe and quality agro outputs for consumption and should be globally accepted like their counterparts across the globe.‎

    He added that quality control of commodities starts from the field operations, including land clearing, soil testing, seeds selection, chemical application and good agricultural practices.

    “There is no time than now to mainstream food safety into agricultural production if we want to really diversify our economy using agriculture as veritable tool and also have our own share,” he said. ‎

    ‎‎In his address, Gov. Abdullahi Ganduje, said that reverting to agriculture was the only antidote to the nation’s economic crisis.‎

    “Agriculture must be productive. And we are happy that the present administration under Muhammadu Buhari had taken agriculture as a very important issue of economic development,” he said.‎

    ‎He ‎urged the Federal Government to site one of the proposed zonal certification centres in Kano due to its potentials.

     

  • Nigeria to begin yam export to UK

    Nigeria to begin yam export to UK

    Nigeria will on Thursday begin yam exports to the United Kingdom with 72 tons of yams in three containers, the Minister of Agriculture, Chief Audu Ogbeh said.
    He said the matter was tabled at the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting on Wednesday as a major milestone in the export market and diversification process.
    According to the minister, the country would strive to export more yams and other food commodities to other countries to earn more foreign exchange.
    “We had cause to inform the council that last week we completed arrangements for the first formal export of Nigerian yams to the United Kingdom.
    “I know that we have had reactions from the Nigerian public.
    “Some people have asked if that is of any importance; others have asked if by exporting yams we are not going to subject Nigeria to hunger.
    “I had to inform council today that that would certainly not arise.
    “You would remember about Match or April this year some of you asked the same question: is Nigeria going to face famine? And I said it cannot happen. “Apart from the crisis in the North East we definitely are not short of food although prices are high in some areas; we are working on that.
    “Tomorrow we will flag off this export in three container loads of 72 tons of Nigerian yams. “Two containers went out in February; one arrived in New York on June 16.’’
    The minister stated that the information is important because everywhere yam was sold around the world as African food, consumers called it Ghana yam. According to him, Nigeria accounts for 61 per cent of total yam output in the world while the rest is shared between some countries in West Africa and the West Indies.
    He said it was an embarrassment not to find Nigerian yams in foreign markets.
    He said that the export was significant because as Ghana was targeting $4 billion from yams in the next three or four years Nigeria being the masters in yam business had no business lagging behind.
    Ogbeh said most of the yams produced locally were lost to wastage because of poor technologies and preservation.
    He, however, said the issue was being addressed by using solar coolers in markets and producing areas to keep the commodity at 14 degrees Celsius to last about two or three years.
    Ogbeh said the point was made because of the FG’s diversification, economic recovery and growth adding that the country had to export what was needed by other countries to earn more foreign exchange.
    He said labour was the only challenge the country might face, adding that mechanization was introduced to solve the problem.
    He noted that a new plough was designed for tractors at the Nigerian Centre for Agriculture Mechanisation, Ilorin, to make yam heaps.
    He said with the mechanization in place farmers would see yam cultivation and export as an economic opportunity.
    The minister noted that food exports from the country had indeed gone up.
    “Food exports have gone up in the last one year by 82 per cent; so they will increase.
    “We want to make sure that what we send meets the finest standard in the world market.
    “If people chose to use their money to import irregular, unnecessary items government will look into that and apply adequate regulations to rationalize importation.
    “We are not banning anything, but if you must import things that are not necessary be prepared to pay the duty on them.
    “After the flag off (inauguration) tomorrow we will know the kind of volumes that the European market is looking for.
    “We are now testing the market; we find they are accepting the yams; they rejected them before because we didn’t handle them well.
    “Then in the next comment I will make to you in about a month or two I will tell you exactly what we expect, both from the U.S. and UK and possibly other parts of the world, including China.’’
    Ogbe added that good news was the request for roast cashew nuts by Wallmart, the biggest retail shop in the U.S.,  worth about 130,000 tons of processed cashew nuts per annum valued at $7 billion.
    He said Nigerian cashew was hitherto shipped raw to Vietnam, which processed and exported same to U.S.
    According to him, the Federal Government will in 2017 create six cashew processing factories in  Enugu, Imo, Benue, Kogi, Kwara and Oyo the existing cashew belt.
    He said that Nasarawa and Kaduna also grew cashew in quantum adding that the increase was because of the focus on non-oil exports.
    He said government was also targeting industrial starch for textile industry and export to China adding that India was also asking for all sorts of beans for their $100 billion beans market.
    He said the possibilities in agriculture were limitless.
  • ‎FG okays N701b power purchase guarantee for GenCos

    ‎FG okays N701b power purchase guarantee for GenCos

    …Power generation hits 4,000 megawatts

    The Federal Executive Council (FEC) on Wednesday approved N701 billion as Power Assurance Guarantee for the Nigeria Bulk Electricity Trading (NBET). 

    The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola briefed State House correspondents at the end of FEC meeting chaired by Acting President Yemi Osinbajo.

    He was accompanied by the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed and Minister of Agriculture, Audu Ogbeh.

    Fashola said that the facility, which will be made available by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), is to guarantee the payment for the evacuation of power produced by Generating Companies (GenCos) for the national grid. 

    The amount, he said, will be drawn on monthly basis to tackle liquidity challenges faced by GenCos.

    NBET will pay GenCos in arrears of electricity generated as a deliberate step to boost their confidence and that of intending investors to the sector. 

    Part of the liquidity problem being faced by GenCos is the inability to pay their gas suppliers.

    Fashola said: “You will recall that a few weeks back we announced the approval of council for early works for the second Niger Bridge. That bridge at some time was part of a PPP initiative. You will also recall that at some time some private agreements have been signed to build the Lagos-Ibadan express way. 

    “The first memo is to brief council on the PPP status of those infrastructure projects and present options to government which was essentially that government where those PPPs are having problems, government must lead and finance the infrastructure while continuing to engage the private sector. Government remains committed to ‎having private participation in infrastructure renewal.

    “But government as a matter of strategy thinks that it can continue until financial closures, agreements and all of that are put in place when PPPs become ready and viable to help deliver. So, it was a strategy memorandum, the conclusion essentially which is that government is committed to doing short financing as much as possible and encouraging PPP as much as possible. 

    “The second memorandum is in another area of critical importance which is power‎. Part of the challenges there was addressed in the memo that was presented to council to solve some of the liquidity problems, especially as it relates to NBET. 

    “NBET as you know is the government’s own company, which is the Bulk ‎Trader Electricity who buys power from the GENCOS. The liquidity problems that have characterized the market have affected NBET’s ability to deliver on its PPP obligations through the GenCos.

    “So, going forward in order to strengthen NBET, CBN is proving a payment assurance guarantee for any energy produced by any GenCos, so that the GenCos can pay their gas suppliers when they get paid. So that the hydros can continue to operate.  

    “What we seek to achieve here is to bring some stability to the production side of the power value chain and also give confidence to investors who want to come in, who are concerned about how to recover their money….. payment assurance and also people who are planning to invest in the gas sector which is being championed by the ministry of petroleum also are saying the same thing in terms of payment for gas produced.

    “So, the approval of council was to provide this guarantee for NBET, which is a 100 percent government owned company to pay on a monthly basis it’s obligations for energy actually produced on to the grid to the GenCos that are its customers,” he said.

    He said that the government is expanding transmission capacity regularly because it wants to generate more power.

    He said “I have been here to announce to you transmission projects that have been approved by council and over the last one year plus the transmission capacity has grown to almost seven thousand from five thousand and is continuing to grow with every project.

    “So, it is not the problem of taking power, ‎it is actually a problem of getting power from generation. If you recall just about a few weeks ago you were reporting that power supply had dropped to a little over 2000. It’s back now at over 4000. Because what we were seeing on the eastern side of the Delta was that there power. We have solved the transmission problem in Ikot Ekpene largely to evacuate over a thousand. But the gas suppliers were being owed so they were not supplying gas for the power producers. 

    “As to the quantum of the guarantee, it is for two years from January this year right through to December 2018. It is capped at a maximum of N‎701 billion but it is to be drawn monthly. It is possible it may not reach that. But we are projected on the total cost that NBET will likely to pay. And that is why it is for power generated onto the grid only.

    “So, if the power generated does not meet that cost we don’t pay for it. It is paid in arrears at the end of the month not in advance. So, it is for actually what gets unto the grid. And this is part of the reforms that we have briefed you about that we were planning to undertake,” he said.

    He also said that he briefed the cabinet on the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) status of the Second Niger Bridge and Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.

    Minister of Agriculture, Audu Ogbeh, said the FEC approved the sum of N263 million for three research institutions to produce gum Arabic seedlings for Nigerian farmers and for export.

    He said Nigeria earned as much as $43 million from export of gum Arabic last year, and that more will be earned with increased production, especially the commodity is in high demand in 17 other countries.

    Ogbeh disclosed that similar efforts are on to boost Cassava research, noting recent discovery of well-packaged ‘garri’ imported from India.

  • Corrupt uniformed men to blame for high cost of food items- Minister

    Corrupt uniformed men to blame for high cost of food items- Minister

    Minister of Agriculture, Chief Audu Ogbeh, has  blamed rising cost of food items on corrupt practices of men of the Nigeria Police, Nigeria Army, and Nigeria Customs Service.
     
    Ogbeh told stunned members of the Senate Committee on Agriculture that the extortionist practices of the uniformed operatives especially at the numerous check points and ports was responsible for the acute hunger in the land. 
     
    The minister spoke at the 2017 budget defence of his ministry.
     
    He noted that despite having written formally to the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, Comptroller General of Customs, Hameed Ali and other heads of security agencies against the unhealthy situation, the fraudulent practices remained unabated. 
     
    Ogbeh said: “One of the factors responsible for the high cost of food items is the daily unbearable extortions men of the Nigeria Police, their counterpart in the Army and Customs Service visit on truck drivers conveying farm produce from the hinterland to urban centres under the guise of carrying out security checks.
     
    “These truck drivers based on raw lamentations made to the Ministry in recent time, alleged that at every check points, they are always forced to part with reasonable amount of money by any group of the security agencies, which they said, made farmers to have no option than to factor cost of the extortion into prices of the food items”.
     
    Ogbe also listed other factors that affect government’s agricultural policies including  high cost of diesel which now sells for N300 per litre .
     
    He noted that because trucks conveying farm produce are powered by diesel, the cost of diesel affect the cost of the produce.
     
    He also said that the treaty on free movement of goods and services put in place by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) among member states, paved the way for movement of not less than 300,000 trucks of grains outside Nigeria on daily.
     
    The Ministry of Agriculture, he said, cannot check such huge movement of grains outside the country..
     
    He assured that the federal government would soon reduce prices of food items following the Presidential committee set up to that effect.
     
    He however said that farmers were already kicking against the move to reduce the prices of food items.
     
    Ogbeh noted that farmers were angry with him over the move to reduce prices of food items because they see the subsisting situation as very favourable economically to them.
     
    He said: “The situation on ground as far as high prices of food items are concerned is one of a dilemma to me because while the city dwellers are unhappy with us, farmers are very happy and seriously kicking against any move to tamper with their happiness by cutting down the  high price  of farm produce for now.”
     
    The Minister said one of such farmers asked him recently in Katsina not to tamper with the present price of food items.
     
    The farmer, he said, claimed that he made N4 million from the sales of Sorghum which had catapulted him from the realm of poverty to that of affluence.
     
    He said that another farmer in Anambra state claimed to have made N1 million profit from sales of rice as a result of the current market price.
     
    Ogbeh told the committee that his Ministry’s 2017 budget  would be driven by the need for food security in the country.
  • Minister laments herdsmen/farmers crisis

    Minister laments herdsmen/farmers crisis

    • As FG plans nutritional grasses for cows

    Agriculture and Rural Development Minister, Audu Ogbe, Thursday said that the increasing spate of crisis between herdsmen and rural farmers was taking a toll on agricultural sector of the country.

    Ogbe said that as part of Federal Government effort to tackle the problem, his ministry would develop paddocks to grow grasses, develop boreholes and dams for cattle rearing across the hinterlands.

    The minister stated this during the budget defence of his ministry in the Senate.

    Ogbe said that the project would enable herdsmen to have a more organised life, where their children would have access to education and other basic needs.

    He said, “We are facing a major national problem between herdsmen and rural farmers and we have to bring the crises to an end.

    “There is too much death, violence and too much destruction, gun fire is being used by the herdsmen against rural farmers.

    “ So we will go for massive nutritional grasses across the hinterland because what the cattle want is grass and water and we have the capacity to grow the grasses they want.

    “If it can be done in Kenya and Saudi Arabia, there is no reason why we cannot do it here. So there is a sizeable provision in the budget to grass up the hinterland,’’ he said.

    The minister noted that as part of his ministry’s determination to take agriculture to the next level, it would improve on bee production, hides and skin, bush mango seed (ogbolo), life stock, cotton and groundnut among others.

    He said the ministry would also consolidate on local staples, particularly rice and wheat, which consume 11 million dollars a day in import.

    He noted his ministry would further introduce two programmes to assist young Nigerians and women.

    Ogbe said that small factories will be built in large quantities for them, rather than allowing them to go through the rigour of acquiring land, loan and equipment.

    The minister warned that Nigeria was at the risk of starving to death by the year 2050, if nothing was done to ensure an all year round farming.

    For him, the present mode of farming would not sustain the increasing population in the country.

    Ogbe stressed the need for all major stakeholders to work towards improving mechanized farming and irrigation, to ensure an all year round farming to avert the problem.

    He said, “We have written to state governments to encourage them to develop dams and canals so that  agriculture becomes an all year round activity  and it is not confined to the rainy season alone.

    “Four or five months of farm activity cannot sustain the country for 12 months besides  by 2050 Nigeria’s population will be very close to 500 million going by the current rate of growth.

    “This is just 34 years from now. If we carry on at the current rate of one crop per year and very low mechanization,  Nigeria runs a risk of starving to death.’’

  • Agric to create three million jobs – Minister

    Agric to create three million jobs – Minister

    Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbe, Thursday said that the Agricultural sub-sector will create three million sustainable jobs this year.

    Ogbe also said that government has concluded arrangements to focus on Agriculture as one of the key sectors for economic diversification as well as the largest contributor to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

    The Minister spoke at his ministry’s 2016 budget defence session in the Senate.

    He noted that the key initiative for the fiscal year, 2016 in the Agricultural sub=sector is to increase the national food supply to address national food security, to add 20 million metric tons of food annually and to create three million sustainable jobs annually.

    The ministry, he said, will continue with the Growth Enhancement Support (GES) programme as a platform to deliver inputs like fertilizer, seeds and agro-chemicals to small holder farmers.

    On critical projects and programmes, he said that the ministry in the budget 2016 will concentrate on import substitution commodity value chains; export substitution commodity value chains; labour intensive family enterprise (Life) programmes; agricultural mechanization and grazing reserves/ stock routes development.

    The minister who gave summary of 2015 budget performance said that N2,755,369,984 representing 50% of capital appropriation was released and N488,133,883 representing 18% of release was utilized, leaving a balance of N2,266,417,876.

    The balance, he said, will be utilized before March 31, 2016.

    He said that the ministry projects Internally Generated Revenue of N904, 739,098.69 for 2016 fiscal year.

    The IGR, he said, will be made up of N664, 998,569.88 as taxes and N239, 740,528.81 as Independent Revenue.

    The 2016 budget proposal for the ministry is N40, 918,856,927

     

  • Manufacturers urge Agric Minister to rescind ban on raw material

    Manufacturers urge Agric Minister to rescind ban on raw material

    Investors and members of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) in the agricultural sector have called on the Minister of Agriculture, Chief Audu Ogbe to help in the reversal of forex policy by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

    The forex policy of the CBN included one of MAN’s most important raw materials, Crude Palm Oil (CPO) on the ‘not valid for forex’ list.

    Recently, President of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), Dr. Frank Udemba Jacobs said that forex should be made available for genuine manufacturers that use CPO as a major raw material for production of end goods such as noodles, biscuits, cosmetics, etc.

    According to him, this decision by the apex Bank has threatened the existence of several manufacturing companies who rely heavily on Crude palm oil as a major raw material for production.

    “These companies have invested heavily in plants and machinery worth several billions of dollars in the country and what the CBN is indirectly telling them is that it could not be bothered with the challenges this policy is posing to our members,” Jacobs noted.

    The manufacturers’ chief further revealed that these companies have been involved in the agricultural sector of the nation’s economy as part of their backward integration program, thereby creating more jobs and strengthening Nigeria’s ability to be self-sufficient in food, beverage and cosmetic production.

    Dr Jacobs commended the present administration for its efforts in trying to revolutionalise local industries through this policy; but stressed that there are certain indices that must be taken into consideration before full implementation of such policy.

    He explained that while the policy is a welcomed development, there should be no sudden obstruction to importation of the raw material that is needed for local production, especially when demand for such material cannot be met locally.

    According to Index Mundi, a data portal, the domestic palm oil produced in Nigeria equaled 930,000 MT in 2014. The consumption of palm oil in Nigeria amounts to 2.0 million MT per annum.

    The official figures states that the shortage in oil palm industry is estimated to be around 900,000 MT annually. This poses a very precarious situation for the manufacturing sector that depends largely on CPO as a major source of raw material.

    If this shortage is not filled with importation of high quality food grade palm oil, the economy will lose further investment in the manufacturing sector as companies would be forced to shut down and relocate their business outside the country, like it happened in the past.

    It is pertinent to note that 90.0% of crude palm oil is consumed by the food industry and the remaining 10.0% is used by the non-food industry. Food products like noodles, biscuits, vegetable oil, margarines, cereals and bakeries, depend on CPO as raw material.

    The Noodles industry alone consumes 72,000 MT of imported palm oil and the leading, domestic palm oil producers cannot meet this demand. Nigeria today produces only 1.7% of the world’s consumption of crude palm oil, which is insufficient to meet its domestic consumption that stands at 2.7% and likely to increase in coming years.

    Jacobs explained that for Nigeria to meet the shortfall in local usage of crude palm oil and be self sufficient, Nigeria needs a total plantation of 300,000 hectares of land, which presently is not available.

    He emphasized that backward integration program is a long and gradual process, and most of the major users of CPO have already embarked on huge investment in plantations across the country.

    Palm plantations takes time to come to full maturity before it can be harvested and while this process is ongoing, there must not be a total shutdown of the plants due to inability to access forex to purchase high grade CPO from foreign markets.

  • BREAKING NEWS: Adesina elected as AfDB president

    BREAKING NEWS: Adesina elected as AfDB president

    Nigeria’s outgoing Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina, has been elected President of the African Development Bank (AfDB).

    He succeeds outgoing Donald Kabureka as the bank’s helmsman.

    Details later…