The fact must be told that agricultural
development in terms of meaningful impact on economic activities with full
engagement of the grassroots people will be sustainable by way of direct
release of statutory financial allocations to all the local government councils
so as to stimulate rapid development in the rural areas as people participate
in farming, livestock keeping, forestry preservation, security, health,
education and environmental management of the rural areas across the nation. No
doubt all these have been neglected to make rural areas become shadow of itself
with no much impact of Government presence.
For rural agricultural development especially
to be effective, the local government authorities must be actively engaged by
direct release of their statutory allocations from the Federal Government (FG)
without any interference of the state government, and until this practice is
well accepted that we can be hoping to have food security as economic
activities along the production, processing, further addition values, marketing
and transportation are being fully carried out in these areas unhindered.
Nothing can actually happen close to
grassroots economic reactivation until the local government council are
economically empowered to carry out their function of rural development to
avoid too much concentration of power at the centre, and invariably reducing
the migration of people from rural areas to urban centres for jobs.
We must all come to the realization that our
economy cannot in any way get better until we begin to accept that local
governments’ autonomy is sacrosanct to nation development through sustainable
grassroot economic engagement of people in wealth and job creation in an
environment well manned against food insecurity and functional infrastructures
to enable economic activities.
Our intention is usually to emphasised the
need for direct funding from the FG to the local government in order to
fast-track rural agricultural development with active participation of local
council areas since they have all the departments of Agriculture be it cropping,
livestock and husbandry, extension services, forestry department and all other
departments which can galvanise the agricultural activities development in the grassroots
areas.
It is very sad and unfortunate that even at the
instruction of the President MohammaduBuhari that allocation meant for the local
government authority should be directly given to them that many states have not
complied as it’s only in few states of the federation that such is being done
without interference as many local government have even compromised with the
states’ government.
President Buhari in an exclusive interview
with Arise television has alleged some of the local government chairmen who are
supposed to stand for their legal rights of receiving direct full financial
allocations as being compromised as they are being asked to sign for N300
million to collect just N100 million when actually they knew that the 300
million was just a drop in an ocean in the face of what is needed to be done
when it comes to infrastructural provisions that will enhance food system
productivity and other activities in the rural areas.
A nation that does not take its rural
development into big consideration is doomed, no wonder the state of the nation
is experiencing the present economic challenges as rural areas where the impact
of governance supposed to be felt are totally neglected to experience
insecurity, clashes between herdsmen and farmers, kidnappings, banditry,
collapse of infrastructures to enhance economic activities and apparently total
desertion of rural areas for urban centres making food activities being short
change of human labour.
Other impacts of neglect of the local
government areas result to indiscriminately felling of trees without replanting
leading to deforestation and aggravation of impact of climate change resulting
to erosions due to flooding and drought in some parts of the country that have
led to wastages and destruction of many foods.
For how long do we strive in this without
allowing due diligence to take its course in the country by full financial
autonomy to the local government for them to be able to effectively attend to
the needs of local areas without interference of the states’ government while
each effort are complimenting others for the growth of the entire nation in a
very competitive economic manner with infrastructural development and what have
you. Doing this is a task that must be done.
Most of the rural roads are so bad that make evacuation of the agricultural produce from the farms so difficult with many got rotten and wasted right there in the farms due to no access road as the department of works and road maintenance are not activated with fund to fix many access roads. All these are what give us concern with a hope to have a change towards uncaring attitude to rural areas to the chagrin of national development
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