Garba Shehu Claims Food Prices Declining Amid Forex Restrictions On Import

Against the submissions of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN(, Garba Shehu, Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Media and Publicity, has said that food prices are declining.

The President had Thursday directed the Central bank of Nigeria (CBN) to restrict access to forex for for food and fertiliser importation in the country.

MAN as well as Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) kicked against the directive, warning that it could cause further inflation, adding that the country was not sufficient in food production and still needed forex to import some food items.

Dr Ahmed Adamu, a senior lecturer in the Department of Economics, University of Abuja, who was a guest on Channels TV breakfast programme, Sunrise Daily, faulted the timing of the policy because of the inflation already in the economy.

“It is also a wrong time because we have not built the right infrastructure and not supplied the right agriculture facilities and we have not built the entire agriculture value chain. We are also facing insecurity and a lot of farmers have been displaced from their farms and they cannot produce much. And now the government is discouraging cheap importation from other countries. It is going to create a lot of food scarcity in the country,” The Punch quoted Adamu to have said.

“Now we are seeing a high rise in the prices of food items in the country and this measure is going to increase the prices of food items further at a time when we just came out of COVID-19 lockdown.”

But Shehu who also spoke as a guest on the TV programme, countered that it was absolutely wrong to say food prices were rising.

“To say the cost of food items is connected to the closure of the borders is absolutely wrong. And to say that the prices of food ain’t coming down, I think the scholar has detached himself from the market because we sat through the meeting of the National Food Security Council and we heard presentations by experts – people who had surveyed the markets.

“As of yesterday (Thursday), in the morning of the meeting, go and check the index in markets. For instance in Kano, millets that had gone up to N24,000 has now gone down to N12,000, N13,000. Rice that had been N25,000 is now N20,000. Corn, maize is now N18,000 for the old stock and N14,000, N15,000 for the new stock.

When one of the moderators opined that the media aide’s viewthe reality being faced daily by Nigerians on the streets, Shehu insisted, “As the Germans say, if you want to get the best of the weather, open the windows. My suggestions to the journalists who sit and write all of these numbers is, send your correspondents to the streets, go to the markets and find out.

“I didn’t say that all of the prices, the changes had crashed completely. They are coming down because the harvested items are coming into the market. Prices are coming down, they will continue to go down as more and more food items are harvested. It’s a seasonal thing and we are going to see through this as well.”