Nigeria spends $1 billion to import tomato paste - UNEP

The United Nations Environmental Programme, UNEP, has lamented that the Nigerian government spent about $1 billion on importation of tomato paste.

The African Regional Coordinator of UNEP, Dr. Richard Munang, who made the revelation, weekend, during the official inauguration of the Nigeria branch of Ecosystem-Based Adaptation for Food Security Assembly, EBAFOSA, also noted that over 75 per cent of tomatoes were wasted in the country because of lack of storage facilities.

He expressed regrets that about 240 million people in the continent go to bed hungry and that malnutrition was high, affecting nearly 200 million people which in turn resulted in the death of over 50 per cent of children below five years.