FG craves foreign partners, states support for agric development

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.