THE Chairman, Senate Committee on Agriculture, Senator Abdullahi Adamu, said on Saturday that findings by his panel had shown that desperate merchants were behind the current high cost and scarcity of food items in the Nigerians markets.

Adamu, who raised the alarm while addressing journalists in Abuja, also blamed the governors for the recurring cases of farmers-herders clashes still being experienced in many parts of the country.

Adamu lamented that merchants of food items in their hundreds usually targetted the harvest period to besiege both mechanised and small holders farms and buy off their produce for the purpose of hoarding them.

He alleged that the desperate merchants would wait until there would be acute shortage of food items before selling them to Nigerians at exorbitant prices.

The lawmaker said their activities were frustrating the efforts of both the farmers and the regime of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), to make food available to the people.

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He said, “Nigeria was running a mono-economy before President Muhammadu Buhari was sworn in 2015. He (Buhari) has since taken serious interest in agriculture.

“He banned importation of some basic food items in order to encourage Nigerians farmers to produce enough for both local consumption and for export.

“There are so much food items being produced by the farmers. Unfortunately, desperate middle men and women are going directly to the farmers to buy the products for the purpose of hoarding them and sell at exorbitant prices.

“What we discovered at the level of our committee is that those middle men are the cause of the current food scarcity we are experiencing in Nigeria. They have the products in large quantities in their various warehouses waiting for the prices to go up before selling them.

“There is so much production of food items in the country. Despite the setback occasioned by COVID-19 last year, we were still able to produce enough food items for Nigerians.”