Less than two percent of the N12.2 trillion total budgets of the federal and state governments will be spent on agriculture this year, Daily Trust investigations have shown.
This is happening at a time of the government's much trumpeted determination to move away from oil to agriculture as the mainstay of the economy.
The federal government's determination is reflected in its 2016 budget which, for the first time in over 40 years, is targeting more revenues from non-oil sources.
Over the past year oil prices have continued to fall and there is no guarantee its volatility will end any soon.
Daily Trust's analysis of the combined expenditure of the federal and 30 state governments shows that they will spend N196.33 billion (1.6 percent) on agriculture.
About half of these figures would be expended on running the bureaucracies of the agric ministries and their related agencies of forestry, rural development and water resources, among others.
This figure is far below the 2003 AU-Maputo Declaration's Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), which requires African countries to allocate at least 10 percent of their annual budgets to agriculture and achieve 6 percent annual growth in agricultural GDP.
CAADP is Africa's policy framework for agricultural transformation, wealth creation, food security and nutrition, economic growth and prosperity for all, which Nigeria is a signatory.
In Maputo, Mozambique, in 2003, the African Union (AU) Summit made the first declaration on CAADP as an integral part of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD).
President of the National Association of Nigerian Traders (NANTS), Ken Ukaoha said this poor agric funding contradicted the much touted diversification of the economy and job creation mantra by the two tiers of government in the face of dwindling oil revenue.
Ukaoha told Daily Trust that poor budgeting by governments had suggested that Nigeria only signed the agreement alongside other countries as a face saving measure.
Source: Daily Trust
No comments:
Post a Comment