By Levinus Nwabughiogu
ABUJA-Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has said that it wouldn’t “make sense” to keep spending huge sums of money on importation of food when Nigeria has arable land that can grow food locally.

He added that foreign exchange constraints had greatly affected importation.

Osinbajo made the submission while receiving in his office at the presidential Villa, a Russian delegation led by the Russian Minister of Agriculture who was also the Co-Chair of the Nigeria-Russia Joint Commission, Mr. Alexander Tkachev.

“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.

Osinbajo

Osinbajo also invited Russian farmers to invest in Nigeria, produce and import from here, saying “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.”

Both the Vice President and the delegation that included the Russian Ambassador in Nigeria, Ambassador Nikolay Udovichenko, Russian Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Mr. 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.