Stakeholders have faulted the budgetary allocation of N102 billion for the take-off of the National Agricultural Development Fund (NADF).
Of concern to them is that the line items under the budgetary allocation for the NADF do not address the purpose for which they pushed for the additional funding for the agricultural sector.
The stakeholders, including Small-Scale Women Farmers Organisation in Nigeria (SWOFON), ONE and the CAADP Non-State Actors Coalition (CNC) expressed the concern during a press conference organised by ActionAid Nigeria at the weekend in Abuja.
They noted that of the total N102.5 billion allocation to NADF, N150 million (or 0.1 per cent) is for personnel salary, N350 million (0.1 per cent) is meant for overhead while and N102 billion or 99.5 per cent is allocated to capital expenditure.
“We pushed over the years for the creation of a separate fund to support agricultural development in Nigeria as our budget cycle and limited funding cannot cater for the needs in the sector, hence the NADF,” the groups said.
While commending the appropriation of 28 per cent of the entire agriculture budget to NADF, they raised concern that the line items in the recurrent and capital expenditure of the fund are not in tandem with the declaration of a state of emergency on food by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu
The FCT Secretary of SWOFON, Nana Mercy, while reading out part of the press statement on the analysis of the 2024 agriculture budget, said the areas of concern in the NADF were the allocation of 1.2 billion for the purchase of office building, N70 million for office partitioning and fittings in the capital project and office rent of N27.5 million. There is also maintenance of office building and residential quarters cost of N10 million contained in the recurrent expenditure, she said.
