Searching for Agric Intervention fund

The Agricultural Intervention Fund (ATF), an executive bill presented by the former President Olusegun Obasanjo to the National Assembly for signing into law is yet to come to pass since the departure of His Excellency in 2005 and there seems no one talking about it.

 

 The motivation behind this sector having an intervention fund like education is premised on the time bound nature of agriculture to food security which requires that delay may be very dangerous coupled climate change impacts that is becoming more very obvious on productions of both animals and crops as these produce are being lost to un repairable vagaries day by day.

Many stakeholders in the past had frantically condemned the poor funding of agricultural sector in the Nigeria saying the paltry fund allocation may not give food security to the nation, among such people is the Prof. P.O Donli of the Action Aid who said in one of his paper presentation sometimes that the present budgetary allocation for the sector may not assist the realization of the commercial food production that will alleviate poverty, and presently the funding challenges of the GES programme may not be too far from her position.

Prof. Donli stated that “although the Nigerian government has increased its attention to agriculture in the recent years by introducing a range of policies to increase productivity, yet her budgetary allocations and actual spending on the sector is woefully inadequate to reduce poverty especially on the key services needed by smallholders’ farmers. Nigeria spends very little on agriculture; the figures for the states are also low varying from 2.0-5.9%. Not only is spending low, it is extremely erratic”  

 The 2015 Growth Enhancement Scheme (GES) inputs distribution for the raining and last year dry season planting could not take place as money to execute the project are not available thereby making the most popularized programme of the immediately past administration of agriculture under Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina beginning to face fund challenges which ATF would have given a backup in case it was put in place.

A lot of agricultural challenges was addressed in this executive bill among is the funding of the three marketing commodity companies which had already been registered and become operational until it was being ordered to fold up due to lack of funding and other obvious policy summersault reasoning.

Already the usual funding challenges in the sector is not sparing the present Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA) as many of the agro dealers who supplied the 2014 dry season inputs are yet to be paid up till now just as 2015 wet season inputs of Growth Enhancement Support (GES) could not be given to farmers at all the select value chain crops and livestock, and this is a signer to food insecurity next year 2016 except something proactive is done for this year dry season farming.

 All this brought to mind the where about of this executive bill that is meant to address major challenges in agricultural sector, and hoping the resounding of it into the ears of President Mohammud Buhari might worth its being represented to the National Assembly for consideration into law to be signed for effective funding the sector towards economic diversification from oil occasioned.

The last administration of the President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan did not mention anything in the direction of funding back up for the sector in case of any emergency need. It could be recalled that President Olusegun Obasanjo could not signed the bill due to some clauses that were removed from it by the then National Assembly which led to being re represented before the whole thing just went under the carpet.. 

The present level of food security delivery need to be step up with funding intervention that cannot lead to abrupt stop of any agricultural project or delay that may affect  targets which are always the case in Nigeria agricultural sector with evidence of what the present GES is facing financially.

In the spirit of giving more attention to Agriculture as one of the promises of President Mohammed Buhari, his administration needs to put in place a proactive special intervention funding bill for this sector for the purpose of being able to deliver timely when the need arises. 

There might be need to call for the copy of the presented executive bill from the National assembly or the Ministry of Agriculture where the bill must have emanated. This is very important because there were lot of stakeholders’ consultation meetings during the era of President Olusegun Obasanjo than any other regime after him, and this must have informed the putting in place an intervention bill for the purpose of responding to immediate challenges. 

We must not chile away from the reality of putting our agricultural sector in the right footing based on the world economic trend demanding standard products for market competiveness as the Europe sanction of Nigeria agricultural produce will continue to make a threat if we fall to do the right thing that we have capability of doing through political will power of both the Federal and States through more funding into green revolution.  

The impact of intervention fund created for educational sector cannot be under estimated, and such could be effectively derived in agriculture as part of effort to diversify our economy from oil based to other alternatives of the real production of crops, animals, fishes that are in high demand in the world market cum job creation. 

 
Also the low budget allocation for agriculture must be reviewed to meet 10% Maputo declaration which Nigeria is a signatory with attached project model and implementation process that could be explained towards a target and at a glance time frame. The Federal, states and local government authority must be ready to give extra political will to agricultural survival in this country in the face of employment challenges and dwindling of crude oil in the world market