“Adequate funding of Agriculture by state governments will boost sector” – Palladium

Chinwe Ugele, Umuahia

For Nigeria to attain the much desired food sufficiency in the future, there must be improved funding of Agriculture by the government at the centre as well as states across the nation.

Over the years, various state governments have claimed support for agriculture without much substantial effort towards actualising their own programmes.

Using three states in the south east as a case study, a non Governmental Organisation, Palladium in its findings discovered that only about one percent of the total budget of the three states of Abia, Imo and Ebonyi is allocated to Agriculture every year.

At a two day seminar in Umuahia organised in collaboration with USAID, it was agreed by conveners and participants that poor funding is one major factor militating against the development of agriculture in the states under review.

Whereas, out of the 95% of farmers who feed the nation comprise 88% of subsistence farmers. Majority of whom are women who contribute 30% GDP.

The budgets it was said are barely enough to drive the sector. It is insufficient to address the technological challenges in Agriculture as well as the agriculture value chain system.

The facilitators, Maxwell Ahuka na of Palladium Scale project, Ugwuoti Patrick if CARA development and Martin’s Brown of CAD consulting are convinced that increasing agriculture budget to at least 5% will help set the sector on a positive pedestal

The seminar is aimed at adopting alternative routes and means towards getting the attention of government to increase budgetary allocation for agriculture from one percent 1% to at least five percent 5%.

Participants were drawn from Civil Society Organisations (CSO’s), the media, government and unions.