VON DG Urges Youths To Join Buhari’s Agrarian Revolution

Youths in the country should take opportunity of the openings being made in the agricultural sector by the Muhammadu Buhari administration towards boosting their income, Mr Osita Okechukwu, the director-general of the Voice of Nigeria, VON has said. Buhari’s agrarian revolution, he said, was the panacea to their issues.

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

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

According to him, BUGREV is the way to food security and food export to China, United States, Saudi Arabia and 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.”

On how practical his hope on food exports to pay huge loans from China, especially when insecurity is affecting farming?

Okechukwu 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.

Continuing Okechukwu arrated how improved agricultural production will boost rail haulage on the domestic side and that food export to China will definitely balance our trade deficit with China.

Asked how viable the opening to export food to China, US and other countries?

Okechukwu answered that China’s total food imports amounted to 58.28 billion dollars last year, up 25 percent year-on-year, while the annual average growth rate over the previous five years was 5.7 percent, 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 add that 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 favored by a lot more Chinese.

Okechukwu maintained that with vigour and dedication we can have a big cut from the over $50 billion dollars China use for food imports. Is it not embarrassing that advanced countries like Europe and United States have more food to export than 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.”

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