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| IFAD |
The spirited effort of President Mohammadu Buhari to diversify the economy through agriculture received a boost as the International Fund for Agricultural Development ( IFAD) and Government of Nigeria have concluded arrangement to inject 100 million dollar towards commencing a Climate Change Adaption and Agricultural Support Programme (CASP) in seven states of the north, and it is slated to be officially launched in September.
Preparation towards this CASP has commenced with a week intensive training conducted for all the officials personnel that will take part in the implementation of the programme as they are being advised to work as a team towards ensuring success by the Minister of Agriculture, Chief Audu Ogbeh who was represented by one of his directors, Engineer Sunny Modibo at a sessions.
The CASP programme is expected to create agriculture business enterprises skill for participating farmers at all the local government areas of the operating states with emphasis on each embarking on comparative advantage crops with focus on commercial production using best agronomics practices, while giving high consideration to climate change factors before planting.
IFAD is expected to inject about 85 million dollars into the implementation of the programme while the rest of the payment will be shared by the FG and state governments, who will be paying for services like salaries, offices, taxes and other related logistics. While the farmers who are the rightful owners of the business will also pay some token which is not yet confirmed as at the time of filing this report.
The programme which is very holistic in nature towards creating skillful job for youths and women towards curbing restiveness in the core seven states of the north is expected to officially take off next month as all the personnel to be used are already on ground going through intensive training in all the facets of agriculture including finance and procurement..
IFAD Country Program Manager in Nigeria, Ms. Atsuko Toda disclosed to Food Farm News that the climate change adaptation and agribusiness is an agricultural implementation development program of $70million loan and $15million grant, making a total of $85million for seven states of the north east and west includes Borno, Yobe, Kastina,Jigawa, Zamfara, Sokoto and Kebbi.
Ms Atsuko said the program is instituted to ensure commercial agricultural productivity using improved seeds and best agronomics practices to checkmating food imports through better market access with skill enterprises impartation to beneficiaries saying “we are going to have an enterprise development components, and also ensuring that financial services is made accessible to people living in the rural communities, and working with this communities to know their most important need and priority areas”
“Apart from CASP in this region, IFAD ongoing projects are in Niger, Ebonyi, Taraba, Anambra, and Benue states with Ogun in the South West at the rice and cassava value chains development. Also we have a role finance institution building up-program which looks at working with micro finance institutions by helping them to go more into the rural areas financings. Finally, we are looking at new program at the Niger Delta, and some of the southwest states that will focus on youth enterprises” said she.
The National Programme Coordinator (NPC), Alhaji Mohammed LawalIdah said that CASP is a follow up programme to Community Based Agricultural and Development Programme( CBARDP) with larger coverage of local government and villages saying the project is meant to checkmate unemployment in the region with provision of commercial food and enterprises to participating youths and women farmers in the region.
Alhaji Idah is optimistic that the CASP programme would record a higher success than CBARDP, pointed out that the coverage now is bigger saying “ the new programme will be looking at agriculture as a business along the value chains in the green belt areas of the North, an initiative of the Federal Government. Each state will choose a value chain crops based on their comparative advantages. Now there are more villages involved in this new present arrangement than the former programme. All this is to check unrest and create agricultural enterprise job for youth and women farmers who are mainly vulnerable”
Food Farm News also sampled opinions of some the State Programme Officers( SPOs) starting with Mr. Joel Aiki, Kebbi , who said that the training was to prepare the officials on the new CASP concept, and also to educate and build capacity on how to go about the program , pointing that IFAD had run this kind of program under the community based agriculture and rural development for ten years and a lot of achievement were recorded, and this needs to be up scaled, and apart from that we want to look at the concept of value chain development, then to move from production to processing and marketing, which is the main reason why this second program is designed.
Mr. Joel who added that Kebbi state will be looking at sorghum, rice and cowpea, stressed there is a structure already in place coming from the experiences and lesson learned from the CBARDP.
Baba Aliyu Yusuf, SPO, IFAD-CASP, Borno State said that the climate change adaptation and agribusiness program is a training that brought together all the states management officers towards facilitating the takeoff of CASP, which is to run for the next 5years in about seven states in the north with about 100 million dollar to be injected to ensure food security and import substitution.
He added that his state will focus on three crops at the value chain of rice, maize and millet from production to marketing through which the capacity of participating farmers shall be built to enhance processing for a better price earnings and more wealth creation with agricultural enterprises skills that would be linked to financial institutions for credit loans.
Bornu SPO further stressed that the counterpart funding this time around from the State is not as much as the previous CBRDP intervention, but added that all the states government are expected to give at least 40million naira counterpart funding, and all the states government have agreed, including Bornu where insurgency has ravaged almost everything. “I believe this project will be one of the best considering the fact that people are now returning home after peace has been restored to the state”
Alhaji Musa Hassan, SPO, IFAD-CASP, Kastina described the climate change adaptation and agribusiness program as an induction training to get trainers fully involved in the new activity, which involve building the capacity of the rural areas as the project has to do with alleviating and increasing productivity in the state in terms of food security and technical knowhow, improving the soil condition and the issue of climate change. Participants are trained on finance and regulations of spending to achieve maximum result in the programme.
Kastina SPO added that the state is actually having a lot of crops , but will have to pick three, which is sorghum, maize and cowpea, although the state might decide to expand into millet, wheat, cotton , tomatoes and others.
He stressed the issues of climate change saying “we need to reduce deforestation and provide alternative source of energy through the corn stalk, which is environmentally friendly, as we have also tried to see how we can put in place processing machines for cottage industries for our farmers”
The SPO Jigawa state, Umar Abubakar disclosed that the objective and aim of the climate change adaptation and agribusiness program, is to train our facilitators on how to implement the new program so that people involved will know the scope, aim and objective of the project to avoid previous problems encountered in the last CBRDP saying they will focus on rice, maize and sesame for the food security and commercial agriculture business enterprises skill with special attention given to climate change factors.
Umar Abubakar said that “ Jigawa state government as part of the modalities is now gearing towards Agriculture. The essences of this is we are going to augment the effort of the state government in this direction and that is why we have selected wheat to compliment a dry season program that will soon commence by October and rice production by January. As far as counterpart funding is concerned, Jigawa state has no problem because our governor is very passionate about agriculture, and already I have received my counterpart funding to the tune of 68 million while we are waiting for IFAD fund”
The position of SPO, Zamfara, Alhaji Mainasara Shehu Bakurawas not quite different from others as the state staff are well prepared to carry out the programme in a very successful manner adding that “ 80% of our population are farmers and what they need is provide food in commercial way with value addition and processing so as to have enough food security with consideration to climate change challenges.
Alhaji Bakura responding as to level of preparedness said “we are well equipped with all that are required for delivery. I have my complete team who are ready to deliver as they are professionally alert and have all it takes to deliver, so there is no cause for alarm. We shall be doing rice, soya bean and sorghum and all the local governments are involved unlike before when we are only operating in nine. We are waiting for the release of the fund to start off”
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