Government to stop rice importation

Government to stop rice importation

The Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has promised to stop rice importation in four years if elected into power at the April 16 presidential election.

Jonathan gave this promise in his closing remarks at a one-day presidential summit on job creation held at the Presidential Villa.

Agriculture gets priority

He said priority would be given to agriculture and cottage industries to end the problem of unemployment.

"In Nigeria, we had `Operation Feed the Nation’, we had `Green Revolution’, we are still importing rice. By God’s grace, if Nigeria will elect me on Saturday, I will not be happy to come here after four years and talk about rice importation. We must look at certain things that we import in large quantities and see how we can produce here in this country”.

"From all indications rice is the most staple food in this country and from all indications we are supposed to produce enough rice not just for our use alone but also for export,’’ president jonathan said

The president noted that the country must take the challenge of unemployment very seriously in order not to throw the nation into crisis.

Citing the adage that an idle mind is the devil’s workshop, Jonathan said that the rising figure of unemployed youth was responsible for the increase in crime rate.

He said the last census put the statistics of employable youth below the age of 30 years as constituting more than 70 per cent of the entire population.

The president said that the summit was organised to ensure that the potential of youths was positively harnessed.

"The energy in human is just like the atomic energy. You can use it for destructive purposes and you can use it for productive purposes. So if you don’t harness the energy in the youth, then definitely that energy will be used by mischievous people for destructive purposes and that is one of the reasons that we are here today”, he said.

The ruling party presidential candidate said his vision for Nigeria was to make sure that in the next four years or thereabout, we should have a country where our young men and women should have something to do so that those of us who are politicians will no longer have raw materials to be used as thugs.

Dangote’s Solutions 

He assured the Alhaji Aliko Dangote-led National Job Creation Committee that the recommendations put forward on job creation would be implemented.

The president called on the private sector to partner with government in its efforts at generating job for the teeming youths.

He said that the government would provide the enabling environment for the private sector and development partners to collaborate.

In his remarks, Dangote said that the issue of youth unemployment in the country should be considered as a matter of national importance and national urgency.

He said that unemployment should be taken seriously so that the country would not go the way of North African countries, where unemployed youths became effective catalyst for social unrest.

According to him, the challenge of poor infrastructure should be seen as opportunity to create jobs. "Most worrisome in this emerging paradox is that the highest rate of unemployment is in our rapidly expanding youth population. In other words, our youth are underemployed, unemployed or unemployable at the peak of their productivity”, he said.

Finance Minister and the Chairman of the National Economic Management Team, Mr. Olusegun Aganga, said that if the policy interventions recommended by the Dangote Committee were implemented, a minimum of one million new jobs would be generated annually.

He said that implementing the recommendations would also bring about a minimum 7.5 per cent annual reduction in poverty levels over the next four years.

The minister also assured participants of the Federal Government’s determination to exercise the political will to adopt the right policies to implement the recommendations.

He said that the essence of the summit was to bring the private sector, civil society and public sector policy makers together to articulate a roadmap for the creation of an inclusive society to reduce unemployment and eradicate poverty.

NAN/Qasim/Ekata