A cross section of Agric Commissioner and Kano State Governor, together with Agric Minister , Chief Audu Ogbeh |
As National Agricultural
blue print of President Mohammadu Buhari policy direction for the sector’s
implementation process is still going through validation before its
presentation to the Federal Executive Council (FEC), the Federal government has
craved the financial support of the both the foreign donor partners and states’
government to assist in the development of the sector.
The Minister
of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun solicited the international partners’ financial
support to augment lean budget proposal of Agriculture that is before the
National Assemble while Chief Audu Ogbeh , Minister Federal Ministry of
Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) advised all the states government’ commissioners to passionately persuade their
Governors for more political will that
would boost the sector for wealth creation and revenue earnings.
It is
obvious that the 2016 budget on Agriculture presented to the National Assembly
by President Mohammudu Buhari for approval was far below the expectation of Maputo
Declaration of 10% thereby making many stakeholders asking how the government wanted
to use the sector to reposition the declining nation’s economy occasioned by
falling price of crude oil in the international market.
However the
Finance Minister, Mrs Adeosun said the Federal Government would be relying on
the international partners like International Fund for Agricultural Development
( IFAD) African Development Bank ( AFDB)
World Bank( WB) FAO and Islamic Development Bank (ISDB)to give their
financial support to the sector to achieving the desired growth to wealth and
job creation in the country.
Speaking at
the recently National Council on Agriculture meeting held at Kano, the Minister
of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD), Chief Ogbeh admonished all his
commissioners from all the states of the federation to ensure that they passionately
persuaded their Governors to exhibit more political will to supporting the
development of sector financially stressed that we cannot continue with food
importation in spite of all our potentials if all potentials were not
proactively involved.
Chief Ogbeh
emphasized on the need to for high utilization of dams for irrigation farming saying
the rain fed cultivation cannot sustain the president Mohammudu Buhari
commercial food production to checkmating foods import of several billions of
dollar annually where wheat only was gulping 4.2 billion dollar adding the with
the downstream of our dams being used to capacity by our youths and women
farmers adding each state should focus on two crops that they have high
comparative advantages.
As the time
of filing this story the communiqué at the close of the meeting was yet to be
officially released as Food Farm News
learn the paper was still going through processing before it would be finally
release to the stakeholders.
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