Nigeria has for long battled with the challenges of inadequate food production for local consumption and attendant hunger. This situation has led to unnecessary massive importation of rice. Recently, Nigeria authorities banned the import of foreign rice in order to boost local production. The planned cultivation of rice will provide a portion of very nutritious and economical food for a large proportion of poor people. Rice is the most important human food crop in the world, directly feeding more people than any other crop. In 2012, nearly half of the world's population – more than 3 billion people – was reported to have relied on rice every day. Evidently, rice is also the staple food across Asia where around half of the world's poorest people live. Rice is also and is becoming increasingly important in Africa and Latin America. Nigerians consume much of rice too. Africa is a socioeconomically backwards and the continent which needs a large amount of food grain to fulfil the requirement of its ever-increasing population with good nutrients value. To facilitate an improved as well as a healthy food supply, these easy growing crops would be a good option for the farmers in semiarid regions Africa. The paper argues that this is imperative for Nigeria as part of measures of recovering from the effects of COVID-19.