Crude Oil Exports Will Be Insufficient as Nigeria’s Revenue Earner Says, President Buhari

President Muhammadu Buhari
| credits: tualenaija.com

President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday said crude oil and gas exports would no longer be sufficient as the country’s major revenue earner.

He said time has therefore come for Nigerians to do more than pay mere lip service to agriculture.

According to a statement by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, the President spoke while granting audience to the Nigerian-born President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, Dr. Kanayo Nwanze, inside the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

“It’s time to go back to the land. We must face the reality that the petroleum we had depended on for so long will no longer suffice. We campaigned heavily on agriculture, and we are ready to assist as many as want to go into agricultural ventures,” Adesina quoted the President as saying.

Buhari also pledged that his administration would review the long bureaucratic process that Nigerian farmers had to go through to get assistance from the government.

He told the IFAD President that improvement of the productivity of farmers, dry season farming and creative ways to combat the shrinking of the Lake Chad would also receive his administration’s attention.

“There is so much to be done. We will try and articulate a programme and consult organisations like IFAD for advice,” the President said.

Buhari added that foreign exchange would be conserved for machinery and other items needed for production, instead of using it to import things like toothpicks.

Nwanze congratulated Buhari on his victory in the general elections and assured him that IFAD was ready to assist Nigerian farmers to boost their activities.

IFAD is an international organisation established in 1978 to address issues of agriculture and poverty alleviation.