Proposed import ban on rice achievable — Muh’d Arzika Tureta

While many critics still doubt Nigeria’s ability to meet up with her rice sufficiency needs by 2015, through local production, Sokoto State Commissioner for Agriculture has called for supports for the farmers and see what will happen.

Sokoto State Commissioner for Agriculture, Muh’d  Arzika Tureta, said the quantum of rice production in the state and other neighbouring states had risen in just few years due to the collaborative efforts of the state government with the Federal Ministry of Agriculture.

The Commissioner who disclosed this in Sokoto while conducting journalists round recently said “I am 100 percent in support of the planned ban on importation of rice into Nigeria by 2015 because as you can see, our farmers have produced twice as much paddy this year as compared to last year’s rice harvest and they deserve to get the best out of their efforts”.

Tureta added that

Sokoto is fully behind the proposed policy and lauded the efforts of the federal government through the Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA). “Sokoto State farmers”, said he, “are very grateful to the Federal Ministry of Agriculture because of the kind of unprecedented support they are getting in terms of inputs supply”.

According to Tureta, “the dry season farming introduced by the Federal Government and supported by the State had made it possible for farmers to have three rice production cycles instead of just one”.

He explained that the three production cycles makes it possible for rice farmers in the state to produce three times as much rice as they used to in the past, “ the variety of rice made available to the farmers as input, namely: Faro 44 and Faro 52 are long grain and high yielding which have helped to improve farmers productivity.”

Tureta said with the support the rice farmers’ are getting from the federal ministry of Agriculture that the country will surprise the world if the current rice policy under the Agriculture Transformation Agenda is sustained

“In Sokoto State, we are happy with the way agriculture is being managed particularly because it is impacting on our farmers who, as you go round, you will find to be doing very well in agriculture”.

In a further attempt to justify his view that things had changed for Sokoto state farmers, Tureta alluded to the pilgrimage experience in the state. “When it comes to the season of Hajj, rice farmers are among the first people set of people to pay for seats. Go and see the kind of flashy cars some of them are now driving, and when you realize that they have no other business apart from farming, you have to acknowledge that they are doing very well”.

While acknowledging the supports of the state governor, Dr. Aliyu Wamakko, Tureta disclosed that the state had registered a total of three hundred and thirty thousand, five hundred and twenty three (330,523) farmers in the 2013-14 season and that this number has increased exponentially from what it was one year period.

Tureta, a former APC Chairman for Sokoto state cautioned against the “politicization of food security issues”, while assuring of the state government’s resolve to continue to support the federal government’s agricultural transformation agenda (ATA).

Vanguard