Nigeria has no reason to continue rice importation as the practice amounts to the wasting of scarce foreign exchange, a Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) investigation has showed.

For quite some time now, rice farmers across the country have been reporting substantial and sustained improvement in both the quantity and quality of their rice harvests. News Express learnt that against the backdrop of these indications, and in light of the significant depletion of the country’s Foreign Exchange Reserves for the persistent importation of huge stockpiles of rice by certain businesspeople, CBN Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, initiated a fact-finding visit of relevant staff of the apex bank to some rice-producing states of the federation.

“Preliminary indications from reports of the staff visit to Kebbi State are very disturbing, to say the least,” a top-level CBN source told News Express.

According to the source, “In the last harvest season, farmers attained very high yields of about 7 metric tonnes per hectare, whereas the average yield is about 4.5 metric tonnes per hectare. In the absence of off-takers for this bumper harvest, the State Government indicated that it had invested about N800 million to purchase over 180,000 metric tonnes of rice for storage from local farmers, in order to encourage them to continue farming.

“It is also noteworthy that in one of the major rice-producing belts of the state (including Jega and Yola-Augie), only 20 percent of the 500,000 hectares of land available for rice cultivation is being utilised at the moment.”

Instructively, Kebbi is only one of nearly 20 states in the country that can grow rice in commercial quantity. “While we await the findings of the CBN staff visits to other states, the results from Kebbi State alone make it difficult to understand why the country is still depleting her foreign exchange reserves for importation of rice when there is now ample and incontrovertible evidence that we can produce it locally,” the source said, adding:

“In view of the fact that the rice being produced in the country right now is of the highest global quality, and there is still plenty of land for more cultivation, is it not yet time for the CBN to stop rice importers from accessing the interbank market and conserve the country’s very limited foreign exchange?”

•Photo shows Emefiele.