Osinbajo Invites Russian farmers to engage in local agric production

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on Thursday invited Russian farmers to invest, produce and import from Nigeria in continued efforts to diversify Nigeria’s sources of revenue.

He said Nigeria could no longer import food produce when it had arable land to grow more food for export and also given the continued pressure on dwindling foreign earnings.

According to a statement by his spokesman Laolu Akande, Osinbajo stated this while receiving a Russian delegation led by the Russian Minister of Agriculture who is also the Co-Chair of the Nigeria-Russia Joint Commission, Alexander Tkachev, in his office at the Aso Rock, Abuja.

“We are just 6 hours away from Europe by air. Vegetables, flour can be exported to Europe from here, even our local market here is a lot.”

“The oil prices have gone down tremendously and yet large amount of foreign exchange is used to purchase food abroad and we have large arable land for agric. It won’t make sense, if you don’t use the land,” the Vice President said.

Both the Vice President and the delegation that included the Russian Ambassador in Nigeria, Ambassador Nikolay Udovichenko, Russian Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Evgeny Gromyko and officials of Russian’s firm-United Company (Rusal) agreed that Nigeria and Russia should deepen the existing diplomatic relationship, especially economically.

According to Osinbajo “there is a lot of money to be made if Russian technology in agriculture is deployed locally,” adding that there are better opportunities for economic cooperation between both countries.

Speaking earlier, the Russian Agriculture Minister expressed his country’s willingness to enhance the existing trade relations with Nigeria. He observed that the Nigeria-Russia trade volume as at the end of 2015 exceeded $300 million, but added that there are potentials for improvement in the years ahead.