‘Why Food Items Are Expensive In The Country’ – Audu Ogbeh

 

 
    The minister spoke at the 2017 budget defence of his ministry. He noted that despite having written formally to the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, Comptroller General of Customs, Hameed Ali and other heads of security agencies against the unhealthy situation, the fraudulent practices remained unabated.


     One of the factors responsible for the high cost of food items is the daily unbearable extortions men of the Nigeria Police, their counterpart in the Army and Customs Service visit on truck drivers conveying farm produce from the hinterland to urban centres under the guise of carrying out security checks.

   “These truck drivers based on raw lamentations made to the Ministry in recent time, alleged that at every check points, they are always forced to part with reasonable amount of money by any group of the security agencies, which they said, made farmers to have no option than to factor cost of the extortion into prices of the food items”. Ogbe also listed other factors that affect government’s agricultural policies including high cost of diesel which now sells for N300 per litre .

    He noted that because trucks conveying farm produce are powered by diesel, the cost of diesel affect the cost of the produce. He also said that the treaty on free movement of goods and services put in place by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) among member states, paved the way for movement of not less than 300,000 trucks of grains outside Nigeria on daily.

The Ministry of Agriculture, he said, cannot check such huge movement of grains outside the country..