Editorial: Budget padding in Agric research institutes is absurd

The cases of budget padding in Nigeria's democratic process are very prominent in the last two decades, but allowing such to enter into agricultural research institutes is where it becomes a thing of great concern to us, especially with the present food insecurity in the country that needs pragmatic spending for the sector's development.

As we all know that budget padding is an act of inputting uncorrelated projects into an organisation's budget for the purpose of being able to corner the money at any time it is released.

Getting Agriculture research institutes that connote the centre of knowledge and technology innovations into this kind of mess is very unethical and absurd in the ears for crying out loud. And this must be frowned at for immediate discontinuity and restoration of integrity into our modern technology-improved centres.

Our lawmakers must take this issue very seriously because they are the major culprits trying to undermine the integrity of our research agricultural institutes through this criminal act that is short-changing the development of research in Nigeria through the real mandate crops for the entire nation.

What explanation could anybody rationally give to justify a research institute with some of its crops' mandate not competitively doing well in the market, but having in its budget to build a traditional place, a worship place, lock up shops and markets running to billions of naira, while its immediate mandate crops cannot withstand the vagaries of climate-smart agriculture?

Meanwhile, the research institutes' obligation to their communities is obvious with technology and innovation transfer that will give improved yield and better livelihood with more economic earnings to the entire nation.

Our agriculture research institutes must not be turned to just any centre in the name of corruption, using the budget padding, as this would bring disrepute to them among their other colleagues in other nations.

Budget expenditures must have clarity of purpose that is mandate-related to research institutes, and doing otherwise will be unacceptable and must be totally condemned to ensure the integrity of our innovations and technology centres, especially in food security-related matters.