Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Alhaji Sabo Nanono has revealed that the government will soon place a ban on the importation of milk and fish into the country.

According to Nanono, Nigeria has a N30 trillion livestock endowment with abundant resources of over 20 million herds of cattle.

The minister made this known last Friday when he received a delegation of the Management of Leadership Group of Newspapers in his office in Abuja.

He said that with a daily consumption requirement of five million litres of milk, the country had no business importing milk.

All that was required, Nanono noted, was to milk five million cows per day to meet the country’s current consumption pattern.

He maintained that Nigeria must properly tap into this enormous resource to conserve the much needed foreign exchange.

Nanono also stated that with the new impetus given to fishing and aquaculture coupled with the enormous water resources endowment, Nigeria can produce more than the quantity of fish needed to satiate the requirement of its citizens.

With Nigeria’s abundant land and water resources, “we are more than capable of producing enough food for ourselves and also export to our sister nations in Africa,” the minister said.

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, Nanono said, further reinforced the potential of agriculture in Nigeria.

He explained that with the recession occasioned by the pandemic, the government could not have afforded to import anything even if it wanted to.

The government’s agricultural policy of producing our own food, especially rice, has been value-added, Nanono said.

SOURCE: AGRONIGERIA