Sir: The agricultural sector with her 45 plus MDAs got a total allocation of ¦ 138.48 billion comprising of ¦ 79.8 billion for capital expenditures and ¦ 58.7 for recurrent expenditures. While we commend the ratio of capital to recurrent expenditures, the sector’s budget is about 1.3% of the total budget, and shows a dwindling share of the sector’s budget to the national budget from 1.5% in 2019 to 1.3% for 2020. This amount also falls terribly short of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) benchmark that stipulates the commitment of at least 10% of the national budget to the agricultural sector.
The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) is expected to play supervisory and regulatory functions. However, it was observed that out of ¦ 138 billion to the sector, about ¦ 61.7 billion (45%) is allocated to the FMARD headquarter and the remaining 45 agencies and department left to share the remaining 55%. This sharing formula is not the best for the sector. Implementing agencies should have more funds for their statutory responsibilities and functions.
Aside the issue of the role of FMARD in Nigerian agricultural sector development, some of the line items that are described as capital allocations are unclear. For example, the ¦ 771,648,633 for Growth Enhancement Support – GES-Delivery Platform, Roll-Out and Management needs further explanation. The government is currently implementing the Presidential Fertilizer Initiative (PFI), therefore whatever GES is doing in the budget needs to be explained. Furthermore, the ¦ 1.9 that is appropriated for extension services and some other critical projects should have locations for proper monitoring and evaluation. It was also observed that only ¦ 481 million is budgeted for irrigation and crop development. In Nigeria, just about 1% of irrigable arable land is irrigated compared to Thailand’s 26%, which make our farming system majorly rain fed. There are opportunities in increasing the number of hectares under irrigation as this will increase improve the productivity and income of farmers.
Largely, there is an obvious improvement in the quality of the budget compare to what use to be the practice of repetitions of budget line items. However, we recommend that the National Assembly increases the allocation to the sector in the approved budget, devolve more funds and activities to the implementing agencies, remove line items that does not conform to the policy thrust of government and pass the appropriation bill on time. Finally, citizens should note that the success in the agricultural sector does not depend exclusively on the appropriation to the agricultural sector alone; other sectors of the economy also play both direct and complementary roles.
- Godswill Aguiyi, Godswill.aguiyi@gmail.com
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