Amidst rejection claims, Ogbeh says Nigeria’ll keep exporting yam, take over world market

Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, has said that Nigeria will not relent in exporting yam until it takes over the world market.

This came as the minister was reported saying earlier this month that “some consignment of yams were exported from Nigeria to the United States and according to reports we have today, they were found to be of poor quality.”

But speaking on Thursday at the end of the Yam exporters’ stakeholders meeting, Ogbeh said that Nigeria as the highest producer of yam world over will export yam until it takes over the market.

He said, “The Federal government position is that we are exporting yams and we will continue to export yam because we are the biggest producers in the world and we should be the biggest exporter.

“While people are talking now, the rest of the world has given us notice about 10 years from now we won’t be selling much oil, and if you people want to wait till then to look for what to export, the crisis then will be worse than what we have now, and when we want to do it, we look like the enemies of this country we feel sorry for those who are so ignorant, they don’t understand, but we will continue until we take over the world market.”

The minister, meanwhile, refuted another claim that UK also rejected consignments of yam from Nigeria.

Explaining what happened, he said that “there was a delay in shipment. There were not enough cold room facilities, that is what we are discussing.

‘’We are talking, there is a manufacturer now who will be installing conditioner rooms both at the ports and the farms and the mini centres where these things are produced to keep them fresh and to have them packaged properly according to demand standards in Europe and once that is done, the Europeans have no quarrel. The Americans, the Canadians are looking for yams at least the large population of Nigerians abroad are looking for this.”

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Ogbeh went further to say, “We will continue doing the business, expanding it, we have a team coming from the United Kingdom shortly to sit down with us and discuss export possibilities, I was there 11 days ago and they said that food market is £30 billion and Nigeria is taking just £15 million and they were wondering what we were doing, there is no reason why we can’t take 10 per cent and if they need things from us and we can produce those things to their standard, what are we waiting for?

“The team from U.K will come to Nigeria, spend about a week or more, then they will sit down with Nigerian exporters, they (exporters) will hear from the U.K authorities on how they want these things brought to their country, then whoever fails to meet the standard shouldn’t blame anybody, but also we don’t want Nigeria being embarrassed out there by people who are in a hurry to send things without meeting standards.”

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