SIR: The  Guardian of March 16, featured  a report that “ Nigeria spends N1.3 trillion  yearly on  food imports” but that report was more about rice. According to Minister  of Agriculture, Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina, N356 billion  is spent on the importation of rice yearly. Citing the minister, the report also stated that “government was poised to revive the agricultural sector with rice production”.

Of recent, you will find that the Nigerian ministers of agriculture are in fact ministers of rice. But if I may ask: do we expect Nigerians to be eating rice every day of the year? Is this what constitutes a balanced diet? Once we perceive there is food scarcity in Nigeria we immediately rush to import rice. Nigerians have been reduced to refugees in their own country if it is indeed true that it is usually refugees eating the same kind of food everyday.

In fairness to the minister, he did outline plans for cassava flour. But can we really say that  just  eating rice and cassava flour products  constitute a balanced diet? I think the Minister of Agriculture should be working in conjunction with the Minister of  Health and for reasons of cognitive development, the Minister of Education, to decide on what and what not to produce.

Unlike in a place like the United Kingdom, there is no incentive for government to take adequate healthcare of the people,  that is the lot of the Nigerians who pay their medical bills. In the UK, the government is forever preaching the benefits of a balanced diet including vegetables,  fruits,   and regular exercise as a way of reducing the pressure on the National Health Service (NHS).

On the same day of The Guardian report, there was a report in The Telegraph of UK stating that Harvard Public Health School scientists have found a link between regular consumption of white rice and Type 2 diabetes. The study however just looked at Asia and Western countries, there was no data on Africa. Are we ready to conduct our own study on diabetes and white rice in Nigeria? Or as usual we are leaving this to the “white man”? Nigeria launched a Food and Nutrition Policy in 2002. I hope this has not been abandoned in the filing cabinets.

Augustine Togonu-Bickersteth,

London, England.

-Guardian

Posted by admin on May 18 2012. Filed under Headlines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry