In view of the continuous crash in the crude oil price in the international market and subsequent de- valuation of the Naira, a case has been made for massive agricultural revolution and boost in local manufacturing to save Nigeria’s economy. Making this case in Lagos is the Group Executive Director of Dangote Group, Devakumar Edwin who said that the development of the nation’s vast agric potential is the solution to the incessant distortion to the Nigeria’s economy by the market forces.
He stated while fielding question from newsmen in his office recently that Nigeria has left its economic fortunes to the vagaries of the international market forces through excessive importation. He said it was high time private investors latched on this situation and help the government to boost agriculture and manufacturing. He said Dangote has made a huge investment in agriculture and manufacturing by delving into sugar and rice cultivation, fertilizer production, oil and gas refinery as well as petrochemicals. “And these twin activities are the sectors with huge potentials for employ- ment generation which the country is in dire need of at the moment” Edwin said “in our sugar business we engage almost 20,000 people. There is also a small farm where we have about 10,000 hectares and the cultivation is going on today employing another 10,000 people.
Today we are talking about 200,000 hectares of land producing 20 million tons of cane and 2million tons of sugar. “You can imagine the amount of employment we are going to create in the agricultural sector and this is a big intervention, so most of the businesses we have done in the course of our investments will still trickle down to the cities. “However, when we started going into cement, we decided that it has to go close to raw materials be- cause it is more expensive to transport the raw materials, but again, if you see Obajana, it is quite close to Lokoja and Ibese is next door to Lagos, Gboko is close to Makurdi all still inside the country but closer to major cities, but if you talk about farming, we are just looking for arable lands and we are just going right deep into the rural areas, so that people in those areas will see no reason to migrate to the cities, because if they do, it would put a lot of pressure on the cities.
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