The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development of Nigeria, Chief Audu Ogbeh, has disclosed the federal government’s resolve to ban the importation of tomato products into the country by 2021.
He said the continued importation of tomato paste had resulted in massive job losses to foreign countries, a situation which had further impoverished local farmers and denied them a better life.
This was just as Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr. Godwin Emefiele, stressed the need to ban tomato importation and further hinted on plan to prohibit the importation of milk into the country in the near future.
Both spoke in Kaduna recently, during an inspection tour of Gino Tomatoes Farm, which is a subsidiary of GBfoods Africa.
They insisted that the country would soon achieve self-sufficiency in tomato production, enough to even export and earn foreign exchange.
