‘Nigeria must consume what it produces to reverse negative growth trend’

Nigeria’s Federal Government says the negative growth experienced in Nigeria presently will not be reversed unless Nigeria as a country produces what she consumes.
Babatunde Fashola, minister of power, works and housing, made the assertion while decrying the negative growth in Nigeria, at the Special Edition of the Federal Government’s Town Hall Meeting for Youths in Abuja on Tuesday.
Fashola noted that youths must put in efforts and be productive as the recession Nigeria is facing is a passing phase with the assurance that there was light at the end of the tunnel.
While urging Nigerians not to despair that the result of the hard work put in place by the present administration will manifest forcefully next year, he said “I have seen Nigeria like this as a young student. In the 1970s, there was a lot of money from oil, but by 1984 all the money was gone. My contact with recession was that it was difficult to get sugar at that time and there was no food to get at the school cafeteria.”
He noted that “events happened as a result of what we did as well as what we could not control like the global oil price.”
Audu Ogbeh, minister of agriculture, in concurrence with Fashola assured that government was working to ensure fertilizer is being sold for N5000 in 2017.
Ogbeh while responding to questions said it is a step towards encouraging the youths to go into agriculture and help secure the future of Nigeria due to the profit inherent in the sector.
He cited examples from when he was the first Nigerian to mill rice free of stones in 1986 but was discouraged at the time to continue because commercial banks at the time had heavy interest rate for farmers who want to take loans.
The minister urged them to ensure they patronize and purchase made in Nigeria produce and stop transferring wealth meant for Nigerians to sustain other economies.
While hinting that plans are underway to provide land for Corps Members who during their service year will be interested in engaging themselves with agriculture, he promised that a town hall meeting will be organized for youths to discuss issues strictly on agriculture, where the prospects and other issues related to the sector will be discussed.
Lai Mohammed, minister of information and culture, in his presentation stated that government was set to create 300,000 thousand more jobs in the next phase of the N-power volunteer programmes, in addition to the number of cooks who had already been trained for the home grown school feeding projects which has already taken off in three states; Osun, Kaduna and Anambra, adding that the next phase will spread to 11 states.
Mohammed emphasized that more than 1million Nigerians willing to access loans between N200,000 to N100,000 are set to get loans at very low interest rate from the Bank of Industry, while N500billion has been earmarked to sustain Special Investment Programme in the 2017 budget presented by the President.
“Government is unrelenting in its efforts to ease hardship in the land especially youth unemployment. We did not create today’s hardship but we are resolved to end it and make life more abundant for our people. All we ask is your undiluted support.”
Solomon Dalung, minister for youths and sports development, in his own speech explained that the reason for the problem of leadership within the National Youth Council is as a result of interference and manipulations of those outside the age brackets in the council.
He said in his efforts to reconcile the challenge, his ministry has been accused of defying court orders. “We are holding a youth stakeholders meeting to address and put to rest the multiple leadership in the council”.
He further stated that his ministry is partnering with the different ministries to empower and engage youths in the different sectors of the economy, adding that they are planning to return institutional sports where different institutions will engage in various sports like it was done in the past.