The immediate past chairman of Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) and former Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbe, has called on Northerners from desist from politics and embrace agriculture as a business.
Ogbe said politics has never grown any society, adding the forum is worried about severe shortages of finance in the region.
In his valedictory speech on Wednesday as the outgoing chairman of ACF, the former Minister regretted that northern businessmen have to travel all the way to Lagos to access trading because of lack industrial growth in the zone.
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Ogbe handed over to the former Minister of State for health, Arch. Gabriel Aduku after his three-year tenure expired.
“We are afflicted by very severe shortages in education, in finance , we have no banks here really, most of our banks were sold in 2003 to 2005 , so today it’s very difficult for a Northern business man to access trading, you have to go all the way to Lagos, we are not experiencing industrial growth , if we don’t have industrial growth we can’t create jobs even agriculture is in trouble because of this endless kidnappings and killings that is troubling us, we have to get the north back to business, politics is not a business, it has never on its own grown any society, so these are the concerns we have that is why am happy about what I saw in Sokoto , we are going to Kano and do the same.
“We have to add values to food we produce, the north produces ginger, soybeans, zobo etc, now the Libya have paw-paw , we now the largest rice producer in Africa, we did it , in 2018 we overtook Egypt, and Egypt is asking us to export rice to them now and we can do it but we have to organize ourselves. Political power becomes too important, a day will come when a big manufacturer or rice owner will not want to go into politics,” Ogbe said.
(Nation)
