Jonathan spoke when the Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina, formally presented to him a loaf of bread made from cassava shortly before the commencement of the weekly Federal Executive Council meeting at the State House, Abuja.

The bread was produced by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Ibadan.

The President shared the loaf of bread with Vice-President Namadi Sambo to the admiration of council members.

He said unknown to many Nigerians, some of the imported goods were not as good as some goods produced in the country.

He said he had been eating the cassava bread since the minister brought some samples to him about a week ago.

Jonathan promised that he would continue to eat only the cassava bread until he relinquishes power as the president of the country.

He said, “I think it is proper for us in the Council to formally present this bread to Nigerians. I have been eating this bread for the past one week and I will continue to eat only this bread until I leave the State House.

“We must encourage what we have. Other countries that became great did not wake up one day and become great.

“If you look at the history of a country like China, at a time they closed their doors and restructured everything, and began to think again and by the time they opened their doors, the rest is known by all of us.

“For us as a nation to move forward, we must also tame our exotic taste.  Some of these things we bring from outside are not even as good as what we have within our country.”

The President recalled that the cassava bread project started during the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo to encourage Nigerians to use cassava as part of the ingredients of producing bread and other items because of the high cost of wheat.

He said at that time, the Federal Government was pleading with Nigerians to use only 10 per cent of cassava but today the nation is proud of bread that is 40 per cent cassava and 60 per cent wheat.

He expressed his administration’s readiness to provide incentives for bakers who use cassava flour in order to encourage them.

He said the Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, would meet with the Minister of National Planning, Mr. Shamsudeen Usman; Minister of Trade and Investment, Dr. Olusegun Aganga; Chief Economic Adviser to the President, Prof. Nwanze Okidigbe; and Adesina to come up with policies that would be adopted to encourage those who use cassava flour for their manufacturing processes and certain other activities.

Earlier, Adesina while describing Nigeria as the highest cassava producer in the world, regretted that though the country produces 34 million tonnes of cassava, it accounts for zero per cent in terms of value added.

The minister said the present administration under the agriculture transformation strategy was working hard to create new markets for cassava growing farmers.

-Punch

Posted by admin on Dec 1 2011. Filed under Latest Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry