Few weeks ago, President Muhammadu Buhari touched a raw nerve when he announced his directive to the Central Bank to stop the sale of foreign exchange for importation of food into the country. He was reported to have based the decision on the belief that agricultural production had stabilized and the country was already inching towards food security.

However, that decision has drawn much ire across the country, as some say it would lead to rise in the prices of food products. Worse still, the ban on forex allocation has been misinterpreted in many quarters as a wholesale ban on importation of food, even when this is not so.

The decision to ban forex allocations for food imports follows the placement of 41 products on the forex sale ban list in 2015. The idea behind the ban is not only to reduce the pressure on the naira, occasioned by huge imports bill, but also to encourage the local production of food such as chicken, fish and rice.

There is no arguing the fact that Nigerian’s huge food imports bills which run into billions of naira is a drain on the nation’s limited forex earnings. It is partly the reason that the dollar exchange rate is so high as the nation imports more food and other products than it can afford. The over-dependence on imported rice, wheat flour, sugar, milk etcetera also contributes to the growing unemployment in the country.

This is a situation in which the country’s huge population depends on food imported from all parts of the world, even when we have good fertile land that is suitable for farming and a large number of unemployed persons. Unemployment has become a huge problem and the growing idleness of our youths is already fueling insecurity as the devil finds work for idle hands to do.

There is no doubt that the increasing robberies, kidnapping and even insurgency are results of the growing despondency and desperation of unemployed and under-employed persons, who have, more or less, become irrelevant in the developmental scheme of the country. Many of these are citizens who have lost all hope of making a legitimate living in the country.

If Nigeria had been able to sustain agricultural and industrial production, and our food and other factories were operating at optimal capacity, the tendency for our youths and other unemployed persons to opt for a life of criminality will be reduced. While the factories are shutting down over a barrage of problems such as poor electricity supply, low purchasing power, poor incentivization and financial inadequacies, our penchant for imported foods keeps the farms and factories of other countries bubbling, as they struggle to meet their exports to Nigeria. Certainly, this scenario is not sustainable for a country that hopes to be food secure and keep its citizens positively engaged.

However, sudden ban on allocation of forex for food imports will lead to a sharp rise in the prices of food items. This is because importers will now have to source for forex at higher rates and import less, while the shortage and higher prices of imported food items will also fuel a sharp increase in the prices of locally produced goods.

What the government has to do is to moderate the ban or give sufficient notice to cushion the effect of the inevitably higher cost of food on the masses. While there might have been an increase in the production of some food items like rice, Nigeria cannot be said to have fully steadied its agricultural production or be on its way to food security. This cannot be said to be so when a large amount of major food staples such as rice, fish, wheat flour and sugar eaten in the country is imported.

What the government needs to do at this time is to further boost food production. Rice production must go beyond the successful Anambra and Kebbi rice experiment. More parts of the country should be made to enjoy the massive support for agriculture. Every geo-political zone must be helped to significantly increase production for local consumption and exports in products in which they have comparative advantage.

By doing this, more jobs will be created, instead of exporting our jobs to Chinese factories. Many Nigerians can be employed to keep the machines in our factories rolling. This will be a win-win situation for the country.

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