WorldStage Newsonline– The National Centre for Agricultural Mechanization (NCAM), Ilorin is currently overwhelmed by 30 per cent of the N100 billion vote for Zonal Intervention Projects (ZIP) in Nigeria’s federal appropriation law 2024, according to investigation by WorldStage Newsonline.
However, as the federal lawmakers chose the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security as cover to deliver their constituency projects, majority of the services sourced from NCAM have no relevance to the the general objective of the agric agency to accelerate mechanisation in the agricultural sector of the economy in order to increase the quantity and quality of agricultural products in Nigeria.
As the lawmakers earlier passed the 2024 budget with N1.2 trillion increase, the ministry of agriculture ranked high among others that they used to push items they considered beneficial.
NCAM of the ministry’s 47 offices, departments, and agencies which accommodated over 30 per cent of the ZIP vote initially had a proposed budget of N1.8 billion from the executive but was later jacked up to N38.8bn billion by the lawmakers. That is over 1600 percent increase to fund its 172 capital projects . No fewer than 100 of them, gulping more than 70 percent of the allocation, came up as constituency projects, all stuffed in the final budget from the National Assembly.
While Section 2 of NCAM Act clearly states the objectives to accelerate mechanisation in the agricultural sector of the economy, its 2024 budget line items (projects) are for health care delivery, information technology, universal basic education, power, works, and youth and social development across the nation.
According to the investigation, other projects that have no relevance to agric mechanization that the agency is currently saddled with include funding of community health insurance and maternal-child health care service, renovation of hospitals and primary health centres, construction of Islamic and civic centres, distribution of sewing machines and motorcycles for youth and women empowerment, construction of offices for the DSS, NDLEA, NSCDC, and distribution of packaged foods as palliatives.
There are other projects, unrelated, too, whose pattern of recurrence gives away the sponsors’ intention; most of them showed up in senatorial districts and constituencies whose representatives include principal officers and ranking members of the National Assembly (NASS).
For instance, the line item marked Construction and Equipping of ICT Centre comes up in 10 LGAs and constituencies across Akwa Ibom., all adding up to about N4 billion.
In a similar pattern, the agency charged with mechanizing agriculture will be supplying solar streetlights in Lagos, Zamfara, Katsina, Imo, Kwara, Jigawa, Bayelsa, and Adamawa all as a single line item with N1.2 billion vote.
The same goes for classroom construction in 10 states, for the same amount, and repeated all over again for another set of 10 states.
The Act that sets up NCAM clarifies the agency budget’s procedure: all projects its board approves form the core of the budget line items it proposes every June, and the board submits it to the minister latest October, for the coming year.
There is no section of the Act or clause implying accommodation of constituency projects the board doesn’t approve.
According to its Section 18, subsection 2, “The Minister shall cause a copy of each report made to him under this section to be submitted to the President”.
President Bola Tinubu earlier said he understood NCAM’s plight when the Minister of State for Agriculture, Aliyu Abdulahi visited the centre in January, promising a repositioning.
Responding to NCAM’s Executive Director, Abdugalfar Kamal’s statement that the centre needed testing facilities and modern tools, he said, “NCAM ought to be at the heart of our mechanization effort.”
But recent development has turned the powerhouse of Nigeria’s agricultural mechanization drive to a conduit pipe for delivering all manners of constituency projects with no relevance to its core mandate, to the federal lawmakers.
