National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) has called on the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu-led administration to return Nigeria to its past glory as one of the highest producers and exporters of palm oil in the world by reviving moribund palm plantations scattered across the country.
NANS equally urged the federal government to invest heavily in the cultivation of palm trees and processing of palm oil in order to prevent capital flight estimated at over US Dollars 600 million spent by the country to import the product annually.
These were contained in a statement signed by the clerk of the Senate, NANS National, Comrade Abdul-Yekinn Odunayo.
Odunayo, who was apparently reacting to the revelation by the president, National Palm Produce Association of Nigeria (NPPAN), Mr Alphonsus Inyang, said that the students body found it “extremely shocking and alarming to learn that Nigeria spends humongous sum of $600 million to import palm oil annually”.
Inyang had at a press conference he recently addressed, disclosed that Nigeria spends a colossal sum of $600 million on palm oil imports annually.
Reacting to the revelation however, NANS’ Clerk of the Senate National declared that the situation is not only disheartening and unpleasant, but clearly portrayed the country as heading for an economic abyss.
He emphasized that the largest body of students in the country found it appalling that Nigeria is spending fortunes to import palm oil that could be locally sourced.
“One wonders whether the people at the helm of affairs in the country have forgotten or better still, failed to understand the economic maxim called Balance of Trade, else, how could a nation with more importation and less exportation grow its economy? It is sad that Malaysia, which came to Nigeria to learn how to cultivate palm trees in the 70s, is now the second best exporter of the product to the rest of the world.
“If $600m is injected into this current fragile and wobbly economy, we strongly believe that the country will witness a leap in economic prosperity,’’ they said.
