The Economic Organisation of West Africa States (ECOWAS) and ActionAid Nigeria have called for massive investments in the Nigeria’s agricultural sector to feed its rapidly growing population.
The both organisations acknowledged President Buhari for signing the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) and also call for investments in rural infrastructural and export promotion for the country to take advantage of the opportunities in the agricultural sector.
They also made a call for early released of the 2020 agricultural budgetary allocation to support coordination of the sector and knowledge building of the CAADP/MALABO performance indicators.
“The gains made by the sectors MDAs as mentioned in commendations should be sustained and improved upon in the 2020 agricultural budget, the GES should be retained and the budget should be increased to address the inputs gaps experienced by smallholder farmers, especially women,” Mohammed Shehu, chairman, Ministry of Agriculture, Kebbi State.
“For 2020 and subsequent years, agriculture budgeting and other policymaking processes strategy for involving and mainstreaming the concerns of smallholder farmers should be developed,” Shehu said.
He added that leaders of women farmers associations and other smallholder farmers’ vulnerable groups such as those living with disabilities as well as CSOs should be invited to budget preparatory meeting before the release of budget call circulars.
“There should be political will to allocate as least 10 percent of annual budget to the agricultural sector in line of the Maputo benchmarks for agricultural investment. Buffer funds from sources such as natural resources and climate funds may also be considered given the strategic importance of the sector,” he said.
He advised that given the time bound of farming activities, agricultural budget must be released on time fully to enable farmer plant in due season.
Stakeholders present at the signing of the communiqué stated categorically that since women and youths are not homogeneous groups, their budget lines should be separated to ease implementation, monitoring and evaluation, adding that the ERGP succession plan should equally adopt provision and recognition of food as a human right issue as contained in the APP.
They also call for more investment in the National Centre for Agriculture Mechanisation (NCAM) to enable local fabrication of simple farm machines and promote the use and adoption of mechanisation in the country.
The stakeholders also disclosed that there is a need that FMARD and relevant state ministries and NSAs continue to engage CAADP/ECOWAP/NAIP in all the processes, adding that the government should create a budget line that would sustain the implementation of the consultative meeting annually.
They maintained that there should be synergy between the National Bureau of Statistics and other related bodies to develop tools and mechanism for planning and developing gender responsive budgeting and disaggregated agricultural data for better sector performance.
The stakeholders also called for effective biennial reporting by Nigeria to Africa Union Heads of States and governments in line with the Malabo Declaration and commitment of 2014, saying it will strengthen citizens’ participation toward 2020 agriculture budget responsive which will give room to food security and wealth creation.
VICTORIA NNAKAIKE, LOKOJA
