NewStats: 3,264,417 , 8,183,665 topics. Date: Wednesday, 11 June 2025 at 01:04 AM 451e2l

The Federal Government yesterday bemoaned Nigeria’s over dependence on imports for its daily needs including food items.

Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh said it was ridiculous that the country spends over $18m annually on importation of tooth picks.

Asked how he arrived at the figure, he said it was from a recent Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) report, stressing that it was pathetic that Nigeria was spending its hard earned resources on non-essential items. The Minister reeled out some scary statistics on the nation’s food import situation for example; where over 7 million tons of rice consumed annually in the country were imported from Thailand, India and Vietnam.

Ogbeh said: “We depended on Thailand, India and Vietnam to feed us with rice, we depend on other countries to feed us with tomato paste; we depend on others even for tooth picks at the cost of 18 million dollars per annum. We depend on Brazil for sugar; and we also depend even now on other countries for pepper and so on. We import 5million eggs per a day from South Africa. We bring sliced potatoes from South Africa. We spend $600 hundred million in importing fish a year. There’s no reason why we can’t grow our fish here.

''We bring in milk and milk products to the tune of $1 billion dollars per annum because our cows don’t yield enough milk. One litre per a day and the meat you eat is as good as plastic because the cows walk too much. To walk from Maidugiri to Lagos is a bit of excessive exercise and when we spoke of special grasses to feed the cows, we got all the abuse in the world on the internet because those who don’t know about the subjects got involved.”

While he said the Buhari government was making efforts to reverse the trend, the Minister regretted that the country lacked enough machinery for food processing.”
“We don’t have enough rice mills even now that rice paddy is increasing in large volumes. We are behind schedule in our capacity to mill our rice. We don’t have enough mills to produce enough cassava starch for the textile industry,” he lamented.

https://www.today.ng/news/nigeria/188879/nigeria-imports-18m-tooth-picks-yearly-minister

Why can't we produce all these things in Nigeria?

Too bad...which way naija

Der is nothing we done import

In our house, we produce our toothpicks.

Yet we say there shouldnt be recession.

Part of the story also talk about not enough milling capacity for our local rice.

And cassava to starch production for textile mills

The recession is a blessing for those with money to invest

Dat is supposed to be cottage industry with the kind bamboo we have left and right

To help with your issues,

My company Foreign Currency Innovations based in London specialise in making international payments.

Here at FCI we offer a fully regulated service which allows you to exchange your Naira into USD with no transaction fees without the use of a letter of credit. We are able to exchange Naira for up to $5,000,000 USD per day at a rate of 424 to 1 Dollar and the funds will reach your beneficiary within a 2-3 day time-frame.

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JamesFCI:
To help with your issues,

My company Foreign Currency Innovations based in London specialise in making international payments.

Here at FCI we offer a fully regulated service which allows you to exchange your Naira into USD with no transaction fees without the use of a letter of credit. We are able to exchange Naira for up to $5,000,000 USD per day at a rate of 424 to 1 Dollar and the funds will reach your beneficiary within a 2-3 day time-frame.

My email is [email protected] - Please get in touch if you would like to discuss further.

oga teach us how to make tooth pick
- name of materials
- name of equipment or machine to use
- the process to go through
- before you know it I will export it and give you dollars to transact

asha01:


oga teach us how to make tooth pick
- name of materials
- name of equipment or machine to use
- the process to go through
- before you know it I will export it and give you dollars to transact

Please see the link in answer to your questions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP_7FIpPFEQ
When you start exporting them, give me a shout

they r still talkng abt toothpicks after spending 16months in power.
If audu ogbeh start toothpick industry him go die?
D money wey these guys dey take import these things abeg cbn dey dash dem? No be thier money...
Ataya for all this noise o.

yaki84:
they r still talkng abt toothpicks after spending 16months in power.
If audu ogbeh start toothpick industry him go die?
D money wey these guys dey take import these things abeg cbn dey dash dem? No be thier money...
Ataya for all this noise o.

Don't mind these politicians. I can count the number of politicians that are employers of Labour in their private companies engaging in production.

Toothpicks might be small and it's a stick that's why everyone is seeing it as if it's a walk in the path.

A complete toothpicks factory requires 12 machines amounting to not less than 22000USD excluding shipping and clearing costs. That's over 10 million naira currently.

You will need to secure a land or warehouse for it, employ workers to mount the machines and be paying them.

You will need to source and purchase the bamboo for the picks production.

Considering our epileptic power supply u will run most of those machines on diesel and still compete with the market price.

Toothpick production requires you also grow ur own bamboo so as your cutting them others are growing.

So if your one of those who think toothpick is a walk in the park I suggest you think twice.

It will swallow upto 14 million naira and your not sure of breaking even in three years.

How many of these politicians have sponsored entrepreneurs to venture into production?

Toothpicks this tooth pick that


Rubbish.

Useless country, I'm not surprised


By 2020, we will start producing Pencil
Funny country

''We bring in milk and milk products to the tune of $1 billion dollars per annum because our cows don’t yield enough milk. One litre per a day".......While Kenya that is just about 25% of Nigeria's population is producing about 5 billion litres of raw milk annually, making pasteurized milk one of the cheapest thing to buy in Kenya! There was over supply of milk few months ago forcing milk processors to convert some of the excess to powdered milk and stored while some were poured away and since Kenyans don't naturally take powdered milk, they will be reconstituted into liquid before they can be sold.

Pavore9:
''We bring in milk and milk products to the tune of $1 billion dollars per annum because our cows don’t yield enough milk. One litre per a day".......While Kenya that is just about 25% of Nigeria's population is producing about 5 billion litres of raw milk annually, making pasteurized milk one of the cheapest thing to buy in Kenya! There was over supply of milk few months ago forcing milk processors to convert some of the excess to powdered milk and stored while some were poured away and since Kenyans don't naturally take powdered milk, they will be reconstituted into liquid before they can be sold.

Wow,looks like Nigerians are more widely into consumption than into production on a whole range.

Here's a good saying for Nigerians to live by :Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap,but by the seeds you plant - Robert Louis Stevenson

Bifwoli:


Wow,looks like Nigerians are more widely into consumption than into production on a whole range.

Here's a good saying for Nigerians to live by :Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap,but by the seeds you plant - Robert Louis Stevenson

Local milk production is very abysmal as Nigeria needs to be producing about 55 million litres of milk daily to meet Kenya's present production!.......Sadly we consume on a whole range far more than we locally produce!