According to Chief Audu Ogbeh, the Minister of agriculture and rural development, the AfDB funding is for the purpose of supporting the youth in Agriculture program of the Ministry.
Chief Ogbeh who made the comments during a courtesy visit to the Leadership Newspapers headquarters in Abuja remarked; “We have a programme for supporting the youth; I think we are likely to get some support from the AfDB of about 150 million dollars, a good part of that will go into supporting some of these schemes, including Fishery”
The Agric Minister stated that he is committed to continue along the policy lines of Adesina, who served as Minister of Agriculture under the Goodluck Jonathan administration.
”What I have said is there will be no policy somersault, we will grow along the existing policy lines, deepened and widened, because somersaults create anxiety among investors and many investors are coming, but we are also going to help that policy by creating extension offices in every local government so that on the spot, there is the office accommodating the expert and the private sector teaching the farmers and renting machineries”
Nigeria’s Agric Transformation Agenda spearheaded by Adesina has been generally acknowledged as successful and the Agric minister, Chief Audu Ogbeh noted that it was on course.
Making reference to the Rice Revolution in Nigeria started by Adesina, Chief Ogbeh revealed that Nigeria would be self-sufficient in rice in the next 3-4 years.
Chief Ogbeh stated that much will be done to improve Agric lending in 2016, he said that a N300b facility will be available to small holder farmers through cooperatives.
He said this decision was reached at a bankers conference and favours lending to Rural farmers.
“Issue of loans has been a major one, but at the bankers conference of three weeks a go, the bankers agreed that they were going to put in place N300b for lending to agriculture and we are trying to make sure that the money goes to the rural farmers”
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