VON DG urges Nigerian youths to support agrarian revolution

The Director-General of the Voice of Nigeria, VON and a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Osita Okechukwu has called on Nigerian youths to join President Muhammadu Buhari’s agrarian revolution for food security and export.

Speaking to All Progressives Congress (APC) youths in Enugu at the weekend, Mr Okechukwu urged Nigerian youths to join the Buhari’s Agrarian Revolution for food security and exports to China, the USA, Saudi Arabia etc.

According to the DG, “It’s high time our youths join President Buhari’s Agrarian Revolution (#BUGREV) for food security and food exports. I think Nigeria can repay Chinese loans with food exports. China imports food in billions of dollars annually.

“BUGREV is the Risorgimento for food security and food export to China, United States, Saudi Arabia and a host of other countries. It is painful that our youths are not engaging sufficiently in agriculture, especially the Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP), an arm of Buhari’s Agrarian Revolution devoted to young farmers, women farmers and poor subsistence farmers.”

He emphatically said insecurity cannot continue indefinitely; more so when Mr President had emphatically ordered the arrest of those Herdsmen bearing arms without Licence.

“And don’t forget that many states are quietly curbing Farmers/Herdsmen clashes. In Enugu for instance we have Forest Guards and in South West we have Amotekun,” the DG noted.

Continuing, the VON DG narrated how improved agricultural production will boost rail haulage on the domestic side and that food export to China will definitely balance Nigeria’s trade deficit with China.

He said that China’s total food imports amounted to 58.28 billion dollars last year, up 25 per cent year-on-year, while the annual average growth rate over the previous five years was 5.7 per cent, data from the administration showed.

“Example, the European Union remained China’s largest supplier of food, followed by the United States, New Zealand, Indonesia and Canada. Meat, oil, dairy, and seafood were among the most popular food imports in China,” he emphasized.

He added that a study by Chen Weinian, purchasing director at Shanghai’s City Shop, posited that foreign food used to be consumed mainly by foreign expatriates and are now being favoured by a lot more Chinese.

The DG maintained that with vigour and dedication Nigeria can have a big cut from the over $50 billion dollars China uses for food imports.

“Is it not embarrassing that advanced countries like Europe and the United States have more food to export than an agrarian country like Nigeria? Yet every crop and every livestock on earth is adaptable to one square meter or the other square meter in Nigeria.

“Same with US which some years ago enacted AGOA for countries like Nigeria. And we have been unable to exploit it because of our over-dependence on oil,” he said.

Suzan O