West Africa trading with food from Nigeria, says governor

With the West African CFA currency trading as twice of naira, its Nigerian counterpart, food from the subregion’s largest economy is being used to trade by it’s neighbors, going by comments from Abdulrahaman Abdulrazaq, a governor in Nigeria.

“We have noted that food in Nigeria is the cheapest in West Africa and our neighbours are using our food to trade.
“They are taking our soya bean and other stuffs to make foreign exchange for themselves.” Abdulrazaq explained on Monday while in company of his three of his governor colleagues.

Abdulrazaq is the governor of Kwara, a North Central State in Nigeria.
He is also chairman of the country’s powerful committee of sub national chief executives, the Nigerian Governors Forum, NFF.

Kwara his state, shares border with Benin Republic, along the the food hub corridor stretching in-between both countries.

So when the governor led three other governors to the country’s minister of Agriculture, it was clear that the governors where on a mission to exploit this new reality.

Though Nigeria has been known to have enough capacity to feed itself, food inflation has wrought tremendous havoc on its economy.

The country recorded food riot in Mina, Niger state, another North Central stake on Monday.

According to Governor Abdulrazaq, food produced in Nigeria is the cheapest in West African region due to the current devaluation of naira.

AbdulRazaq, made this profound observation when he led the Governors of Taraba(Dr. Agbu Kefas),Ondo (Lucky Aiyedatiwa), and Kogi(Ahmed Usman Ododo), on a work visit to the Ministers of Agriculture and Food Security at the headquarters of the Ministry in Abuja.
He maintained that food security should be the most paramount and urgent thing to tackle in the country in view of the skyrocketing prices of food items in the market.

The Governor who commended the re-invigoration of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security in the country, said that functions of the Ministry were taken over by the Central Bank of Nigeria, over the past four years.

“We are quite glad to be here today. Food Security is the urgent thing to tackle now.

“One thing that has to come to realisation is that there is a new Ministry of Agriculture Abdulrazaq said.

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