The Chairman, House Committee on Rural Development, Oladipupo Olatunde Adebutu has lamented the budgetary allocation of N76 billion for the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development Budget, describing it as ”too small for the work at hand”.
He spoke during the 2017 joint budget defence of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development and House Committees on Production Services, Colleges and Institutes and Rural Development.
Adebutu, who represents Ikenne, Sagamu and Remo North, noted that the 1.7 per cent of the budget allotted to agriculture and rural development was still not good enough in a country where at least half of the population lives in the rural area.
He said: “With this figure, lip-service is still being paid to agriculture because the figures do not correlate with reality. “Agriculture is for food sustenance and security; and when properly managed, can change the high rate of unemployment.”
He also berated funds allotted to rural roads and markets, saying: “you have to explore ways to improve rural roads and markets as a way of improving timely movement of agricultural produce.
“We can plant all we want, but if we do not have good roads to move the harvest, nothing will change. Our people lack the critical ingredients to make farming worth the while. “Roads are germane to any hope for us to diversify our economy away from oil to agriculture.”
Adebutu hailed women farmers, describing them as the “backbone of agriculture in the country”, adding that they be factored into the budget.