Nigeria imports 5 million eggs daily —Ogbeh

The Federal government has decried the continued loss of the country’s foreign exchange to the daily importation of about five million eggs from South Africa.

The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh disclosed this when he addressed the ‘Feed the Future’ conference in Abuja.

The project, a United States of America International Development (USAID) initiative in Nigeria is said to have been put in place to support the Federal and state government efforts to improve their capacities to plan and implement effective policy analyses and programs and demand and absorb policy research in their policy process.

According to him “we depend on others even for tooth picks at the cost of 18 million dollars per annum. We depend on Brazil for sugar, we depend even now on other countries for paper and so on. We import 5 million eggs per a day from South Africa.  We bring sliced potatoes from South Africa.”

In his remark, the Principal Investigator of the Project, Dr Saweda Liverpool-Tasie, said that the ‘Feed the Future Nigeria Agriculture Policy Project’ was designed to promote inclusive agricultural productivity growth, improved nutritional outcomes and enhanced livelihood  in Nigeria.