Lagos Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu has disclosed that Lagosians consume N4.5 billion worth of food daily and 50% of beef produced in the country.
He made this known at a sensitisation workshop themed: “Implementation of Food Systems Transformation Pathways in Nigeria 2022,” on Monday in Lagos, according to NAN.
The workshop was organised by the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning in collaboration with Lagos State Ministry of Agriculture and Lagos Ministry of Economic, Planning and Budget on Food Security.
Sanwo-Olu stated that although Lagos covers only 0.4% of Nigeria’s territorial land mass making it the smallest in the country, Lagos accounts for over 60% of industrial and commercial activities. Lagos is a coastal state and has an extremely limited arable land space and is home to about 21 million people.
Sanwo-Olu said, “Its residents consume about N4.5 billion worth of food daily and 50% of beef produced in the country running into several billion in other trading activities with markets cutting across all the local government areas in the state.”
He called for joint collaboration among Southwest goepolitical zone to implement the Food Systems Transformation Pathways 2022.
He said that improving the food systems would influence positive changes and as well address multiple challenges being experienced in the country.
“I am aware that the need for states across the six geopolitical zones to be adequately sensitised on the implementation of the National Food Systems Transformation Pathways is the basis for this workshop.
“It gives me great pleasure to note that Lagos State was selected to host the South-West geopolitical sensitisation which I consider as an acknowledgement of the positive impacts our policies and efforts are making in the agricultural sector.
“As a state government, we will continue to provide infrastructure and incentives to support all private sector initiatives where required,” he added
It was reported months ago that Lagos and Ogun are the only two states out of 36 that made more Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) than the allocations received from the Federal Government in four years (2017-2020), according to a report by a socioeconomic research firm, SBM Intelligence, titled ”Taxing Nigeria’s subnational economies to oblivion.”
The report revealed that “By 2020, we were back to just Lagos and Ogun generating more internal revenue received from Abuja. This state of affairs indicates that almost all of Nigeria’s federating units are not fiscally healthy”.
SBM warned that falling oil revenues have put states in precarious situations, leaving them unable to meet their basic obligations such as paying salaries, wages and pensions not to mention providing social services and infrastructure.
Credit : Nairamerrics
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