By Ikechukwu Okaforadi
The Senate Committee on Agriculture yesterday lamented over the poor budgetary provision for the agricultural sector of the country, saying it should not be anything less than ten percent.
Chairman of the committee, Abdullahi Adamu (APC Nasarawa West), made this known in his opening remarks during the 2021 budget defence session of the ministry of agriculture at the National Assembly.
He said “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 N139,458,322,208.00billion budget proposal represents less than 2 per cent of the N13.08trillion budget”, he said.
Meanwhile, during his presentation, the Minister of Agriculture, Sabo Nanono, broke down the N139,458,322,208.00 billion budgetary estimates as follows: Personnel – N68,031,135,074.00billion, overhead, N3,186,608,895.00billion and capital , N110,240,253,439.00billion.
Speaking also at the event, the Senate President, Ahmed Lawan, who declared open the defence session, advised that there was the need to be more practical with budgetary allocations for the Ministry of Agriculture in creating jobs for the youths.
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