ABUJA — In the face of a persistent surge in the prices of staples across the country, President Muhammadu Buhari has boasted of increasing the local production of food under the Anchors Borrower Programme (ABP).
ABP according to him has facilitated the local production of staples like rice, maize, cotton, and cassava.
Buhari indicated this on Saturday during a broadcast to commemorate the year’s democracy day.
“This initiative supported local production of rice, maize, cotton and cassava. Government financed 2.5 million small-holder farmers cultivating about 3.2 million hectares of farmland all over the country and created 10 million direct and indirect jobs,” he said.
Mr. Buhari also bragged of how the ABP initiative has caused a sharp decline in the nation’s major food import bill from $2.23 billion in 2014 to US$0.59billion as of 2018
“Rice import bill alone dropped from $1 billion to $18.5 million annually,” he added..
However, there has been a consistent rise in the price of food items. The soaring costs have been in part blamed on a worsening conflict between farmers and herders in Nigeria’s agriculture belt that Buhari has struggled to quash.
Overall annual consumer price inflation climbed to 16.5% in January and was at 18.12% in Apri after dropping by 0.05% for the first time in 21 months. That was driven by food inflation, which is at 22.72%.
According to a report by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), on a month-on-month basis, the food sub-index increased by 0.99 per cent in April.
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