The Executive Secretary of the National Sugar Development Council ,NSDC Kamar Bakrin, says Nigeria’s sugar industry has the potential to create up to one million jobs and significantly reduce insecurity if fully developed.
Bakrin made the remarks during a strategic engagement between the NSDC and the Nigeria Customs Service at the Customs headquarters in Abuja, where discussions focused on strengthening collaboration across the sugar sector.
Addressing the Comptroller-General of Customs, Bashir Adeniyi, and senior officials, Bakrin said Nigeria currently loses more than $1 billion annually through sugar importation, stressing that local production could transform the economy and create large-scale employment opportunities, especially in rural communities.
“If Nigeria succeeds in developing a proper sugar sector, one of the things we would do is convert an annual outflow of over one billion dollars into jobs, security, and industrialisation,” he said.
According to him, the industry can generate about 250,000 direct jobs and another 750,000 indirect jobs across the sugar value chain in at least 12 states.
“The beauty of it is that these are rural jobs, not city jobs,” Bakrin added.
The NSDC boss linked rural unemployment to insecurity, arguing that investment in sugar estates could help reduce youth involvement in criminal activities and violent unrest.
“When you have sugar projects, you don’t have unrest or any security challenge because you create so many jobs for the youths,” he said.
Bakrin also highlighted the energy-generation potential of modern sugar estates, explaining that many large-scale facilities are designed to operate independently of the national grid while contributing excess electricity to surrounding communities.
“A sugar estate provides its own power; it does not rely on the national grid. As a matter of fact, it contributes to the national grid,” he stated.
According to him, sugar estates can collectively generate around 400 megawatts of electricity, enough to support a small modern city or industrial cluster.
Industry experts have long argued that Nigeria’s dependence on imported sugar continues to weaken local industrial growth despite the country’s vast agricultural potential. Data from the NSDC has shown that Nigeria consumes millions of metric tonnes of sugar annually, while local production remains significantly below demand.
The Federal Government introduced the Nigerian Sugar Master Plan to encourage backward integration and reduce import dependence by promoting local cultivation and processing. Major operators in the sector, including Dangote Sugar Refinery Plc, BUA Foods Plc and Flour Mills of Nigeria Plc, have over the years announced investments in sugar plantation projects across different states.
During the meeting, the NSDC and Customs also agreed to deepen cooperation on import quota implementation, intelligence sharing, anti-smuggling operations and transparency in industry data management.
Officials believe tighter enforcement against smuggling and better coordination between agencies could improve local production targets and attract more private-sector investments into the industry.
The latest push comes as the Federal Government intensifies efforts to diversify the economy away from oil revenues and strengthen food and industrial self-sufficiency through agriculture-driven manufacturing.
