Nigeria’s outgoing President, Muhammadu Buhari has opened up on how he deliberately shut the country’s borders a few years ago to encourage food production in Nigeria.
While the move was heavily criticised, Buhari noted that Nigerians later appreciated it.
He made this disclosure during the inauguration of the new Customs Headquarters in Abuja on Tuesday.
‘I deliberately closed the borders because knowing Nigerians, they order rice, give some Niger address, and then they bring the rice here,’ he said at the event.
‘With our land potential – we thank God Nigeria is favoured. We have people, we have land, and we have weather. How many nations are as lucky as Nigeria in the world? Very few nations are as lucky as we are! We thank God for that.’
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Continuing, he said: ‘So, closing that border – 1,600 kilometres from Lake Chad to Benin – and Nigerians insist they that they have to impress their neighbours and other people and they eat foreign rice. I said, ‘No rice’.”
‘You eat what you grow or you die. I tried to make my point. Later Nigerians appreciated it because it provided more jobs,’ Buhari added.
‘People got back to the lands – we have them– and we produced what we eat. Let whoever grows excess rice eat his own rice or sell it somewhere else.’
Recall that Buhari had on Monday asserted that he had no doubt that the incoming government of President-elect, Bola Tinubu, would sustain the tempo of his administration.
Speaking at the Presidential Fleet Review, 2023, at the Naval Dockyard Limited, Victoria Island, Lagos, Buhari said he was pleased with the military’s combat readiness.
He said he had confidence that the President-elect, Bola Tinubu, would continue to provide crucial support to the Nigerian Navy, maintaining the positive trajectory achieved during his tenure.