The All Progressives Congress APC Presidential Campaign Council PCC has expressed deep concerns about the current cash crunch which has hit Nigerians as a result of the Federal Government’s Naira swap policy, saying the development is impacting negatively on rural farmers and threatening food security.
“Go to rural areas and see how producers of perishable goods are suffering because nobody is coming to buy. Once you harvest and you don’t sell in 24 hours, it spoils.
“Sincerely, our farmers are dying and something urgent has to be done”, said the PCC.
At a news conference Sunday in Abuja, the Agro Commodities Directorate of the PCC explained how the Naira redesign policy and its troubled implementation is impoverishing rural farmers nationwide, with many of them dying.
The Agro Commodities Directorate is in charge of over 100 agricultural commodities associations, groups and cooperatives.
It noted that most leaders of the agricultural commodities association, groups and cooperatives are hurting as well as its members in rural and suburban Nigeria.
“The pain is also present in urban Nigeria as well and this challenge is literally killing farmers, their hard-earned savings, their fortunes, and this has left most farmers in a state of confused hopelessness.
“Rural agriculture in Nigeria cannot survive without cash in the hands of our people. More than 70% of rural Nigeria cannot boast of power, stable telecoms and banking services. But the resilient Nigerian farmer has built wealth that is in cash. Taking that wealth away without alternatives, rushing the process, killing his or her ability to continue and creating bottlenecks will not help them and this country”, the PCC noted.
A member of the directorate and National Coordinator, Special Projects, Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria RIFAN, Alhaji Shehu Muazu who read a prepared text on behalf of the PCC, said Nigeria is a cash-based society.
“That is how the common man survives. That is why the IMF/World bank doom and gloom predictions over the years about Nigeria has always failed. That is also why the notion of Nigeria being the poverty capital of the world is not true except we want to force through things like the troubled cashless policy that would trigger such reality”, he stated.
