Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari has admitted that Nigerians are going through difficult hardship which is occasioned by rising prices of foodstuffs and others.
The president, in his Eid El-Adha greetings, reiterated the determination of his administration to create a just, balanced and prosperous country in which the safety of life and property is assured and guaranteed.
Reflecting on current challenges facing the country, the President stated that ‘COVID-19 pandemic has taken a heavy toll on the economies of all countries, including Nigeria, in addition to the fact that floods have caused large scale destruction to agricultural farmlands, thereby impacting negatively on our efforts to boost local production in line with our policy to drastically reduce food importation’ this, he explains, has led to food inflation which the government is working spending sleepless nights trying to address.
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According to Buhari, ‘no government in our recent history has invested as heavily as we are doing to promote local production of about 20 other commodities, through the provision of loans and several other forms of support to our farmers.’
He continued, ‘apart from the destruction caused to rice farms by floods, middlemen have also taken advantage of the local rice production to exploit fellow Nigerians, thereby undermining our goal of supporting local food production at affordable prices.’
‘As an elected president who enjoys the goodwill of the ordinary people that gave us their mandate, let me assure you that we are continuing with measures to bring relief to Nigerians, including making fertilizer available at affordable prices to our farmers,‘ he tells Nigerians.
The President also notes that the current insecurity in the country ‘has produced severe and adverse effects on agriculture because farmers are prevented from accessing their farms by bandits and terrorists.’
‘Let me also use this opportunity to reassure Nigerians that we are taking measures to address our security challenges. We have started taking delivery of fighter aircraft and other necessary military equipment and hardware to improve the capacity of our security forces to confront terrorism and banditry,‘ he added.
AFRICA DAILY NEWS, NEW YORK
