AFAN frowns at N13B intervention fund

The President of All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN) Architect Kabir Ibrahim has described the N13 billion intervention fund slated for pest control by Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) in about only 12 states of the federation as baseless to farmers’ need especially in the face of negative impact of covid 19 where many could not afford to get to their farms due to insecurity.
This was contained in a chat and press release made available to us.

Architect Ibrahim said that for a ministry saddled with the responsibility of ensuring food security to be giving out this kind of information when such amount was not included in the 2020 budget shows a level of indiscipline and gross misconduct on the part of the officer in charge.

The association queried the N13 billion government has approved to fight quelea, locust and pest without proper appropriation in the 2020 budget proposal to the National Assembly for approval, adding that ‘’ this kind of information to be churned out to the public is tantamount to gross indiscipline and gross misconduct by any public officer who perpetrated it’’

It was stated that farmers are always surprised to hear this can of information when many of their members cannot even get access to farm due to banditry and kidnappers’ activities which have claimed many lives saying that ‘’

The question we are asking is how the government came to the decision to expend this colossal sum to protect farm produce whose quantum is indeterminate because its cultivation has not even commenced and there is no veritable data to rely on in forecasting what it will actually amount too’’

The statement went further to state that ‘’For any policy driver to come up with this shows that they are not in firm control of what is happening in the Agriculture space or they are hell bent on defrauding the food system from the onset’’ and thereby called upon the national assembly to call for public hearing where appraisal would be given to our food security situation’’

Commenting on the upcoming election of the Association, he said that preparation was presently ongoing at the wards in all the local government which had since started in 2019, and it would finally come to the national level when the exercise would have cut across the grassroots of the federation.

In the press release of the FMARD, it was stated by the Minister of Agric, Alhaji Muhammad Sabo Nanono that the Federal Government has approved the sum of N13b intervention fund for pest control in Nigeria.

The intervention fund is to ensure uninterrupted agricultural activities during 2020 farming season, control trans-boundary pests and minimize the impact of the COVID – 19 Pandemic as well as guarantee both nutritional and national food security.