Editorial - Why direct local govt statutory allocations will enhance agric development

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