The festering insecurity being experienced in most states in the northern part of the country is at the moment impacting negatively on Nigeria’s quest for self–sufficiency in sugar production available facts have revealed.
Most of the states in the northern part of the country currently been ravaged by terrorist attacks, and banditry is known to have a huge comparative advantage in the cultivation of sugarcane, the major ingredient required in sugar production.
Nigeria is known to a net importer of sugar as it is only able to satisfy about 5 percent of national demand, leaving an existing wide gap between sugar requirement and production that usually filled through massive importation of sugar resulting in the outflow of a large amount of foreign exchange.
Findings from the office of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) show that over N57. 2 billion is spent annually by the Government to import from countries, such as Brazil, China, Turkey, France, India, and Egypt.
Sugar is a strategic and essential commodity, which is an important food item, and also a critical raw material in the manufacturing of several food-related products by food processing plants across the country.
Checks conducted by BusinessDay across many states in the northern part of the country indicates that the mounting insecurity occasioned by the incessant attacks by terrorist groups, and bandits on communities where the sugarcanes are being cultivated in the states is posing a serious setback to the national quest for sugar sufficiency.
