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THE federal government of Nigeria claimed to have adopted some measures to reduce the price of food items.

Audu Ogbeh, minister of Agriculture, disclosed this on Wednesday, February 8, while addressing State House correspondents at the end of the meeting of the Federal Executive Council, FEC.

The council had last week set up a task force to advise the government on how best to address the rising cost of food items in the country.

Ogbeh said the task force had submitted an interim report to the council on Wednesday and linked the hike in cost not to shortage of food items “but high cost of transportation.”

He noted that food items are generally moved across Nigeria with heavy trucks and the price of diesel which has gone up had, therefore, led to increase in prices.

He said the government had, thus, decided to “start using railway wagons to transport food items.”

The minister said the use of wagons to transport cattle from the north to Lagos had already greatly helped in reducing cost and would be replicated in food distribution.

“We will also work with state governments to reduce delays experienced by trucks along the roads through all sort of taxes by local governments,” Ogbeh said.

He also said the government had decided to adopt the “Ivory Coast model” in which trucks distributing food items are given special labels.

—  Feb 8, 2017 @ 18:15 GMT

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