By Sani Idris
The Kaduna State ministry of Agriculture, Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) and other relevant agricultural stakeholders had held a 4th quarter sector coordination meeting on Thursday in Kaduna to improve agriculture and strengthen capacity of stakeholders towards achieving food security in Kaduna state.
The Kaduna State Commissioner for agriculture, Hajiya Halima Lawal, said the essence of the meeting was to brief the agricultural stakeholders with the Kaduna State quarterly progress.
She added that meeting was to ensure the State's agricultural system is moving forward as the common agenda with multiple stakeholders and range of activities that translates to food security in the state.
She also said that the meeting was to enhance good governance, increased food production, livelihood improvement and
capacity building of agricultural stakeholders.
"Let me reiterate that globally, 2020 has been challenging especially with the COVID-19 pandemic and other social and economic challenges which further necessitated a collective approach to deliver on our mandate", Lawal said.
She thanked AGRA and its implementing partners, Synergos and other relevant agricultural stakeholders for their support in moving the agricultural sector in the state forward.
Also speaking, the Country Director of Synergos, Mr Victor Adejoh, said the meeting was part of their support to the Kaduna State Ministry of Agriculture in strengthening capacity to implement projects funded by AGRA.
He urged the stakeholders to critically look at challenges which would inform the government and private sector on ways to improving them.
Adejoh noted that the 4th quarter meeting was to strengthen the relationship between the government, farmers, and critical stakeholders in the Agric sector.
“This engagement is meant to help government deliver on the policies that have been developed and also to continue to create enabling environment for the private sector to continue to grow their sectors” Adejoh said.
He lauded the government for the effort in improving agriculture, ensuring food security and it’s open governance policies to ensure farmers had access to inputs and improved practices.
Dr. Esther Ibrahim of AGRA, in her remarks, said In Kaduna State they were working to strengthen the state ministry of agriculture and forestry in the area of capacity building, planning, budgeting, accountability, monitoring and Evaluation.
She explained that the aim was to put together all the agriculture activities happening in the state to enhance productivity and ensure food security in the state.
She urged the ministry to consolidate, put the findings after the meeting together to be able to inform the government on plans and how they could fund and make the agriculture sector better.
One of the stakeholder, Mr Emmanuel Bonet of Aid Foundation, in his findings said continuous rethinking and re-prioritization of agriculture in
the state by increasing its budgetary provision would enable quick and enhance robust development in the agricultural sector.
Bonet lamented the absence of robust advocacy strategy to the
Executive and Legislature, poor funding, Insufficient social media (communications) strategy on highlighting activities in the sector and absence of accountability mechanism which were Impediments to the development of the agricultural sector in the state.
He however recommended that development of robust advocacy plan to the exco and
legislature, Increased
interventions budgetary provision for strategic interventions and creating sub-website on the government website for
the sector would help breach the gaps responsible for hitches in the sector.
"Developing communication strategy with emphasis on social media, setting up an accountability mechanism for the sector and developing of quarterly score card would also go along way in enhancing productivity and the desired outcome towards achieving food security in the state ", Bonet said.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), reports that in attendance of the were research institutes, farmers associations, civil society organisations among others.(NAN)
Edited by Christopher Emmanuel
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