Nigeria’s inability to focus on crops with a comparative advantage in its production and can favourably compete is responsible for its poor agricultural exports, experts say.
According to Ikechukwu Kelikume, an economist and a lecturer at the Lagos Business School, export opportunities do exist and abound in the country, but for it to be fully tapped the wide knowledge and information gap must be bridged.
“Most of the things we export raw we virtually import them back as finished products. The sanitizers we bought during the COVID were ethanol based and Nigeria is the largest producer of cassava,” he said
“We need a road map in the agric sector that ensures every state focuses on crops; they only have a comparative advantage in its production.”
He stated that funding is not the biggest problem confronting the country’s agriculture, noting that the previous administration focused so much on funding with nothing to show for it.
Previous governments have in times past, thrown a lot of weight into funding and “that has led us nowhere, because as long as Nigeria is unable to sell what it produces in-country outside of its country’s shores, much is left to be desired.”
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