Senate Orders Minister To Distribute N17 Billion Unspent Agric Budget To Farmers

As the 2020 budget circle draws close and with the 2021 proposed Appropriation Bill ready to be passed into law next month, the Senate has ordered the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Sabo Nanono to work round the clock to ensure adequate distribution of the N17 billion unused capital budget for agriculture and rural development for the 2020 fiscal year to farmers in the country.

The amount represents almost 60 percent of N35 billion total budget released to the Ministry for the 2020. Meanwhile this is even as stakeholders have raised fears over poor allocation to the ministry, which is supposed be properly annexed for country’s path to boost its diversification policy.

The Senate gave the order recently when the Honourable Minister of Agriculture appeared before the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development to defend the Ministry’s 2021 budget.

The committee, which had the Senate President in attendance during the interface with the ministry and other relevant government’s departments agencies under it, expressed concern on the need to to deploy practical steps to make the sector more viable to open more doors for investments and employments for youths in the country.

“We are already in the month of October and the total budget release is N35 billion. Utilization is N16 billion and there about N17 billion unutilised and we are already in the month of November.

“I understand the issue of COVID-19 and I also know the provision of the law that at the end of the year, if this money is not used, you will have to refund it. I urge the Ministry to work round the clock to ensure that this money meet those it is intended to”, said Senator Elisha Abbo, Adamawa North while scrutinizing the proposed 2021 budget of the agriculture ministry.

Sanator Abbo, also raised concern on some discrepancies discovered in the budget, noting that some of the items in the 2020 budget running into billions of naira were not clearly explained in details.

He further noted that the “Ministry of Agriculture is the only Ministry that I know directly affects the rural people. I believe as the Senate President said, the EndSARS protest is a wake-up call for all of us. We need to go down to rural people and invest in them. In your 2021 budget only N7 billion is budgeted for rural development. It is too meagre to go down for rural development.

Senator Abdullahi Adamu, Chairman of the committee said, “in 2021, the sector witnessed a slight increase with a total allocation of N139,458, 322,208.00.

He explained that “over the years, the sector’s allocation has been abysmally low, a far cry from the Maputo declaration which states that a country should allocate at least 10 per cent of their national budget to the agricultural sector. This year’s budget proposal only allocated 9.2 per cent to the agricultural sector.

In his remark, Senate President Ahmed Lawan, warned that it is longer going to be business as usual as the country is already sitting on a time bomb.

He said the agriculture sector can do something that oil has not been able to do but there must practical and radical commitments from stakeholders in the sector and it is the only way to avert food and employments crisis in the future.

“This sector needs to be given all the support that is possible. Oil cannot give jobs to the youths that we have, only few people and mostly white collar jobs but we know that this sector can give everybody a job. And it has all the potentials to create the wealth that we need to have a fairly meaningful life for everyone.

“We have grown wiser. But the little that we can marshal we have to make sure that we use it efficiently and prudently.
I believe that we need to not only look at what we did in 2020 but approach the 2021 in a very practical way. Recently, we had some of our youths protesting genuinely. They were seeking the attention of leaders and they got the attention of leaders. So our budget especially for 2021 should be mindful of what we do to provide employment opportunities for these youths. They protested because they could do so, there are so many other people who may not be youthful but are also in the same need and they didn’t protest.