Ministry sets up committee to review project performance

* Director commends Fadama programme

The Director, Project Coordinating Unit (PCU), Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) Dr. Maimuna Habib 

·    A 40-man committee has been set up by the government to review the Climate Change Adaptation and Agric Business Support Project (CASP).

The Director, Project Coordinating Unit (PCU), Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) Dr. Maimuna Habib disclosed this recently in Abuja.

She said the need to review CASP was as a result of the very low performance of the project especially at the north east where monitoring officials discovered during their states’ tour that everything about it went wrong.

She related: ‘’I had to quickly constitute a 40 man committee including three people from each state, three from each of project, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), National Planning Commission (NPC) and Federal Ministry of Finance to come together to review the whole project for a better way forward.’’

The director who said the committee would meet on June 13, 2019 disclosed that CASP was a partnership project between the Federal Government (FG) and IFAD and that PCU under the leadership of the present permanent secretary (Dr. Mohammed Umar) had been activated to perform its main functions of coordination and harmonization of all the ministry’s projects with other international partners through effective monitoring towards ensuring agreed terms compliance and also to achieve the government’s economic objective of the sector to creating wealth and employment for both the youths and women through the green revolution alternative policy.

The PCU director however commended the positive impact of the Fadama project which she said had started about 25 years ago saying it had created many youth  and women entrepreneur champions in the sector just as many others like VCDP-IFAD, Agricultural Transformation Agenda Support Programme (ATASP), West African Productivity Programme (WAPP), Agro-Processing, Agricultural Productivity Enhancement and Livelihood Improvement Support (APPEAL), National Food Security Programme (NFSP)  and other pending ones.

Speaking on NFSP Dr. Habib said the programme had ensured transfer of tractors to farmers and also ensured agro processing centres to investors with 20% personal contribution, 40% loan at 9% single digit interest rate from Bank of Industry (BOI) and 40% grants adding that 12 out of the 30 centres are completed for hand over to the owners anytime from now.