Preamble
ActionAid Nigeria (AAN), Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) and the Department of Agriculture & Water Resources of the ECOWAS COMMISSION organised a 2-day Stakeholders Consultative Meeting on the 2022 Agriculture Budget at Dover Hotel, Lagos State, 2nd – 3rd August 2021.
The Stakeholders Consultative Meeting on the 2022 Agriculture Budget is aimed at:
• Facilitating conversations amongst key stakeholders connecting the continental framework – the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) targets and Government intentions within the Agricultural Sector in Nigeria and
• Strengthening citizens’ participation towards making 2022 Agriculture budget responsive for food security and wealth creation.
A total number of 60 physical participants attended (23 female and 37male). The participants included; the House Committee on Agricultural Production and Services, Office of the Auditor General of the Federation, Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD), State Ministries of Budget and Economic Planning, and State Ministries of Agriculture. Also present were – members of Farmers’ Organizations, representatives of Small Scale Women Farmers Organization in Nigeria (SWOFON), representatives of Association of Small-Scale Agro Producers in Nigeria (ASSAPIN), and the Agriculture Research Council of Nigeria (ARCN). ONE Campaign, Heinrich Boell Stiftung, Media, Academia, Research & Finance Institutes, members of the various State Scaling Up Public Investments in Agriculture (SUPIA) and other Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) were also present. 46 participants actively participated in the event through Zoom in all 2 days.
COMMENDATIONS
• Government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) remain committed to collaborating with Non-State Actors, which should be sustained for more inclusive, and responsive agriculture policy and budget making processes in Nigeria.
• We commend ActionAid Nigeria for the successful deployment of the Non-State Actors Biennial Review Toolkit (VABKIT) on specific indicators that has fed into the 3rd CAADP Biennial Review Report.
• We commend the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning for their collaboration in organizing this meeting and prioritizing agriculture as a core driver of the economy.
• We commend FMARD for the completion and submission of Nigeria’s 3rd Biennial Review Report to the African Union Commission (AUC).
• We commend the Auditor General of the Federation and his Office, for their commitment and effort to ensure accountability, transparency and openness in the Nigerian public finance systems. We commend his attending this event, promoting improved budgeting practice for the agricultural sector, and calling on the relevant ministries to show fiscal responsibility in the management of agricultural budget.
• We commend the Chairman House of Representative and the House of Representatives Committee on Agricultural Production and Services, for their commitment towards improving Agricultural Budget legislation and increasing the allocation to the sector. We applaud their effort towards funding agricultural mechanization and plans to channel more oil revenue gains towards improving the agricultural sector – especially for the smallholder farmers.
KEY OBSERVATIONS
During the consultation, participants made the following observations as core issues to be addressed in the 2022 Agriculture budget, MTNDP 2021-2025, ERGP implementation and for the biennial reporting:
1. Without solving food-farm security issues, we cannot solve the national security issues. With rising hunger, social insecurity and the peace of the country will continue to be threatened. Farms are getting abandoned due to social security threats and natural disasters. Making farms safe and funding agricultural mechanisation will create not only more foods but also jobs to engage restless youths that have turned to crime for a living.
2. Smallholder women farmers have continually been given a back seat in the discussion, planning and implementation of agricultural budget, despite their role of contributing over 70% of agricultural production.
3. The Agricultural sector budget is still bedevilled by late budget releases and policy inconsistency. In the light of late budget releases, MDAs need to itemise their priorities and give a proper timeline that synchronizes with farmers and farm season. Without such timed budget, capital budget releases may not be coming at the time when farmers seek them.
4. Though the capital projects utilization in the agriculture sector in 2020 seem to have improved, it can hardly be said that these allocations largely affected the practices of smallholder farmers who were confronted with both COVID19, herders-farmers clashes, natural disasters, late budget releases and crowd-outs by political farmers and contractors who are the budget first liners.
5. That there is huge investment in procurement of heavy expensive machines which are not always appropriate to the needs of the users and unsuitable for the topography and size of land cultivated by smallholder farmers especially women. These technologies are also hard to maintain and usually is dumped when faults develop, leading to wastage.
6. There is inadequate awareness and knowledge on the CAADP/ Malabo performance indicators by stakeholders (Ministries, Departments and Agencies, State Ministries, Farmer Organizations, CSOs, Private Sector, etc.).
7. Access to credit and financial services (from government and non-governmental channels) by smallholder farmers particularly women, is very poor at an average of 43%. The criteria to access formal financial credits schemes and programs can neither be understood nor met by over 70% of smallholder women farmers. This is due to high level of bureaucracy; complexity of application processes, failure of State and LG to provide application supports to farmers, poor literacy level of most of the women, and the failure of the credit managers to adopt credit models that take cognisance of the farmers realities and take advantage of the traditional saving cooperative which these women already belong to.
8. With the expiration of the APP 2020, there is a need to start to make preparation and outline what the new agricultural policies should be. In the drafting of such new agricultural sector policies, consideration should be given to discourage farm practices such as land clearing, and open tillage. The policy should promote soil preparation and restoration practices, small size mechanisation, and improvement in data capturing and coordination across sub-national government.
9. There is need to ensure an alignment between the Medium-Term National Development Plan, Nigeria Agricultural Investment Plan and the budget.
10. The stakeholders’ consultative meeting should be taken as an integral part of the budgeting process across all the MDAs in the agriculture sector both at federal and state levels, as it is productive, and allows stakeholders to make inputs in the pre-budget discussions promoting citizens’ ownership within the sector.
11. The new sectorial policy should be inclusive and participatory enough- bringing everyone on board and taking insight from all the smallholder farmers. The policy also needs to the drafted having the State government in mind to ensure that the policy implementation trickles down to impact on small farmers.
12. There is a need to have a national investment plan for the agricultural sector. The national investment plan should be a compilation of the State developed agricultural investment plan that contains state crops with comparative advantages. Such plan will highlight the commitment of the states, PPP windows and their alignment to the National economic policy and development plans.
13. There is a huge gap in extension agent – farmer ratio, which has a limiting effect on technology transfer to farmers.
KEY RECOMMENDATIONS
1. FMARD, State Ministries of Agriculture and other Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) should create a budget line to ensure the continued coordination and the implementation of the Stakeholders Consultative Meeting on the Agriculture Budget annually at the Federal and State levels.
2. There is a need to bring more smallholder women farmers to the front of the budget planning discussion at national and state levels. Women need to be brought side by side their male counterpart in the discussion and planning of agricultural budget and its implementation.
3. The 2022 and subsequent years agriculture budget should be gender sensitive and responsive by providing line items for the implementation of the National Gender Policy in Agriculture that address specific challenges that affect women farmers different from men as well as avoid lumping up budget for women farmers and other groups such as youths.
4. For 2022 and subsequent years, agriculture budgeting and other policymaking processes, a strategy for involving and mainstreaming the concerns of smallholder farmers should be developed. For example, leaders of women farmer organizations and other smallholder farmers, vulnerable groups such as farmers living with disabilities, and CSOs should be invited to every stage of the budget.
5. As a matter of principle, the 2022 budget for agriculture and rural development should be in conformity with NAIP and the Medium-Term National Development Plan (MTNDP 2021-2025).
6. The process of developing the 3rd National Agriculture Investment Plan (NAIP) should be made more participatory.
7. The three tiers of government should commit 10% of their annual budget to the agriculture sector to meet the 10% Maputo/Malabo Declaration required to support at least 6% growth rate for the sector as postulated in the CAADP framework. There should be political will to allocate at least 10% of annual budgets and actuals of revenues to the agriculture sector with appropriate budget lines so that Nigeria will be on track in the next Biennial Reporting to the African Union Heads of States and Government in line with the Malabo Declaration and Commitments of 2014.
8. State governments should allocate more public investments in agriculture to address the strategic areas of investments that would increase the agricultural GDP to at least 6%. These strategic areas of investments include Extension Services, Access to Credit, Women in Agriculture, Youth in Agriculture, Appropriate Labour-Saving Technologies, Inputs, Post-Harvest Losses Reduction Supports (processing facilities, storage facilities, trainings, market access, etc.), Climate Resilient Sustainable Agriculture (CRSA)/Agroecology, Research and Development, Monitoring and Evaluation, as well as Coordination.
9. FMARD should create awareness/sensitization of stakeholders on the CAADP and Biennial Review Process at state and regional levels across the country.
10. The allocation made to CAADP in the Agriculture Budget should be increased and released 100% to support Coordination of the Agriculture Sector and knowledge building on the CAADP/Malabo performance indicators.
11. Most Agricultural activities are seasonal and is determined by climatic condition which varied from South to the Northern part of the Country. Fund releases should take into account and give priority to seasonal projects. The Federal Government may need to legislate on warehousing funds for Agriculture Sector to mitigate the effect of untimely release of fund.
12. The Agriculture sector requires a separate budget cycle to enable FMARD achieve its mandate. Buffer funds from sources such as Consolidated Oil Revenue, Oil Revenue Surplus, Natural Resource Funds, Climate Resource Funds and the National Agricultural Development Fund (Establishment) Bill, 2019 being proposed by the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development should be considered given the strategic importance of the sector. Additionally, given the time bound nature of farming activities, agricultural budgets must be released on time and fully to enable farmers plant in due season.
13. There is need to synergize all the budgetary allocation line items for agriculture across all ministry. The budget allocation for agriculture is scattered across many MDAs from the Presidency down to the Ministry of Agriculture, Water Resources, etc. there is a need to harmonize and put all agricultural budget in a single ministry – FMARD.
14. Continuous adoption of the use of CAADP/Malabo indicators at state level and build the capacity of state-level stakeholders on the CAADP/Malabo performance indicators.
15. The GES should be re-introduced, and the budget should be increased to address the inputs gaps experienced by smallholder farmers, especially women.
16. Strengthen the monitoring of implementation of Agricultural projects in the budget by all relevant stakeholders such as FMARD, Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning, State Ministries of Agriculture and Agriculture Committees in the NASS and State Assemblies, Farmers and CSOs using an adapted CAADP Results measurement framework and reports documented, shared and reviewed to enhance lessons learning and improvement in budget implementation.
17. National Centre for Agricultural Mechanization (NCAM) that is established for the purpose of adaptive research leading to design and development of efficient agricultural machines and technologies in order to reduce drudgery and improve the quality of agricultural production is not adequately funded; should be strengthened.
18. The poor level of awareness about the credit schemes and the high level of illiteracy among the smallholder farmers, limit their access to agricultural credit. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), BOA, BOI, credit administrator and the relevant MDAs, should invest and make budgetary provisions for wider indigenous public awareness on credit schemes, and training on accessing credits by smallholder women farmers.
19. FMARD, States ministries of agriculture, and Local government should play an active role in ensuring more public awareness on the various agricultural credit schemes in the country. They should make provision to offer handholding technical assistant to smallholder farm cooperative groups to ensure proper documentation of applications, meeting loan criteria, make loan submissions, coordinating loan management, and overseeing repayment programs. The states and local government should better coordinate and play an interface role between the smallholder farmers and credit administrators. This is another window where PPP can come in and State and LGA should explore this window.
20. Considering the agricultural risk; rising insecurity in farms; famer raiding, cattle destructions, and kidnappers, climate and other natural disasters, farmers are not encouraged to continue farm practices without risk covers. Hence, both Federal and subnational governments should promote the enrolment of agricultural insurance policies for smallholder farmers and communicate these programs to famers, while challenging the poor security issues that threatens our farms.
21. States should develop their own Agricultural Investment Plan. This will enable the efforts at the states and local government levels to be recognized in the overall determination of the country’s commitment to the CAADP and enable accurate data for the Biennial Review (BR) Reporting.
NEXT STEPS
• AAN to transmit Communique to relevant MDAs and Institutions as well as all participants
• The communique is to be accompanied with the shadow budget developed and advisory notes as well as request for advocacy visits
• State teams headed by Directors present at the meeting will lead advocacy at state-levels
This communique is accompanied with the Shadow Budget (proposed budget) and advisory notes developed by stakeholders during the Stakeholders Consultative Meeting on the 2022 Agriculture Budget.
Endorsed By
List of Organizations, Ministries, Departments and Agencies, and Institutes that participated in the Stakeholders Consultative Meeting on the 2022 Agriculture Budget
1. Office of the Auditor General of the Federation (OAGoF)
2. House Committee on Agricultural Production and Services
3. Ministry of Agriculture (MOA), Kogi State
4. Ministry of Agriculture, Gombe State
5. National Horticultural Research Institute (NIHORT), Oyo State
6. Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Delta State
7. Ministry of Economic Planning, Delta State
8. Ministry of Budget and Planning, Kogi State
9. Ministry of Agriculture, Bauchi State
10. Ministry of Economic Planning and Budget, Ondo State
11. Ministry of Agriculture, Adamawa State
12. Ministry of Finance & Budget, Adamawa Sate
13. Ministry of Economic Planning, Delta Sate
14. Ministry of Economic Planning (MOEP), Gombe State
15. Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Kwara Sate
16. Ministry of Agriculture, Ondo State
17. Ministry of Agriculture, Kebbi State
18. Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Ebonyi State
19. Ministry of Economic Planning and Budget, Ondo State
20. Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Abuja
21. Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD), Abuja
22. National Agricultural Seeds Council (NASC), Abuja
23. National Centre for Agricultural Mechanization (NCAM), Ilorin
24. Agricultural and Rural Management Training Institute (ARMTI), Ilorin
25. ActionAid Nigeria
26. ONE Campaign
27. Ninth Inning Practice
28. Civil Society Legislation Advocacy Centre (CISLAC)
29. National Association of Nigerian Traders (NANTS)
30. Small Scale Women Farmers Organisation in Nigeria (SWOFON)
31. Association of Small Scale Agro Producers in Nigeria (ASSAPIN)
32. Small Holder Women Farmers Association of Nigeria (SHOWFAN)
33. Trade Network Initiative (TNI), Abuja
34. Food Basket and Community Development Initiative, Abuja
35. Renewed Initiative for African Development, Abuja
36. Environmental and Rural Mediation Center (ENVIRUMEDIC), Delta State
37. Initiative for Peace and Stability (IPAS) PFA BCG, Delta State
38. African Centre for Environmental and Rural Development (ACERD) PFA BCG, Delta State
39. Participation Initiative for Behavioral Change in Development (PIBCID), Kogi State
40. Initiative for Grassroot Advancement in Nigeria (INGRA), Kogi State
41. Participation Initiative for Behavioural Change in Development (PIBCID), Kogi State
42. Youth and Women’s Health Empowerment Initiative (YAWHEP), Kogi State
43. Hands Across Africa Development Initiative (HAADI), Kogi State
44. Lift Up Care Foundation (LUCAF), Kogi
45. Youth and Women’s Health Empowerment Initiative (YAWHEP) Kogi
46. Centre for Community Empowerment and Poverty Eradication (CCEPE), Kwara State
47. Meadow Community Development Outreach (MCDO), Kwara State
48. Fulfilling Dreams Foundation (FDF), Kwara State
49. Worthy Life Education & Health Foundation, Kwara State
50. FEMCOM Communications, Kwara State
51. Fresh & Young Brains Development Initiative (FBIN)
52. Participatory Development Alternatives (PDA), Ebonyi State
53. Loving Hands Initiatives, Ebonyi State
54. Initiative for Social Change in Africa (VOFCA), Ebonyi State
55. Community Activistas, Ebonyi State
56. Activista Nigeria