Minister of agriculture Lokpobiri: Farmers are responsible for Nigeria’s increase in Population.

The minister of state for agriculture and rural development, Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, said the farmers marry more wives and procreate more children – Lokpobiri noted that the growth of the nation’s population is of serious concern to the federal government

The minister of state for agriculture and rural development, Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, has blamed farmers for the country’s growing population. Sun reports that Lokpobiri explained that farmers leverage on the successes of the current agricultural revolution in the country to marry more wives and procreate more children which has led to the astronomical rise in the nation’s population.

commodity.ng gathered that he stated this recently when he received the country’s representative of International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Ms Ndine Gbossa, in Abuja.  It was recalled that the minister of budget and national planning, Udo Udoma, had blamed the nation’s growing unemployment rate on the increase in the country’s population. In a statement by his special adviser, media, George Oji, he maintained that the situation has outnumbered the United Nation’s projection of the country’s population of 200 million by 2020.

“What I discovered is that in some states you have many more rice millionaires now and as they get more money in rice, they also added more wives. “Two things that they do; they are able to go on pilgrimage to Mecca because it is the wish of every Muslim to see how he can visit Mecca. “And so, 99 per cent of those who went on pilgrimage to Mecca are farmers; rice farmers or cassava farmers, maize farmers etc.” Lokpobiri observed that the growth of the nation’s population is of serious concern to the federal government because it is also responsible for the current wild spread malnutrition in the country.

“Our concern is the way our population is growing. If there is a way we can check the growing population, it will be in our own strategic interest to do so. This is why we are having more cases of malnutrition,” he stressed. The two-term senator, also, enthused that Nigerian farmers are now the envy of the society. “The average Nigerian farmer is now a millionaire. In those days, people used to send money from the townships to their relatives in the rural areas, but right now, it is those in the villages that are sending money to their relatives in the townships”, he added.

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