By Amos Tauna
The World Bank partnered Commercial Agriculture Development Programme (CADP), has recorded 82 per cent success disbursement of the budgeted $200 million of its pilot scheme in five states in Nigeria.
The programme which started in 2009 is expected to wind up on May 31, 2017, Task Team Leader, Sheu Salau, has revealed.
He stated this while fielding questions from newsmen on the sidelines of the Wrap-Up of CADP in Kaduna, northwest Nigeria Monday, stating that the scheme was expected to reach 85 per cent disbursement before the closing date.
“The programme has done very well even though it has not been easy but overall, we had good results that we can take to scale,” he explained.
On the challenges faced, Mr. Salau said that they were peculiar to each of the states.
“The challenges are many. It depends on the peculiarity of the state. Some faced challenges of service provider, which emanated from the need to do something through a third party. Issues revolving around the way the services providers were segregated. We had to get people who were specialized in different in different areas,” he added.
On areas in which the CADP programme impacted on infrastructure, he said that some investments were done on roads, but lamented that besides an asphalt road in Kano State, others constructed were laterite based and some are being washed off by erosion.
He revealed that soon, a new project, ‘APPEAL’ which is to cover the existing five states; Kano, Kaduna, Lagos, Cross River and Enugu as well as four other states have been approved by the board of the World Bank.
He said three of the benefiting states were yet to be selected, but assured that Kogi State made it and would benefit from the APPEAL.
Permanent Secretary, Kano State Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Binta Rabiu, said that several of the state’s citizens were empowered by CADP.
“The Kano State CADP was good for the teeming youth and women. Population in Kano is very large and high, resulting to several unemployed graduates and non graduates. The programme helped them a lot. We were able to help them become self employed.
“It was a very important project. It helped the whole state. We had three batches of beneficiaries. The first were 170 women and youth, second and third combined were 685 participants,” she observed.
Mrs. Rabiu also informed that as part of its counterpart funding, the state government contributed N155 million for each of the batches.
For the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture Cross River State, Unimniake Joseph Ugbe, the CADP impacted greatly on the value chain of poultry, cocoa and groundnuts in his state.
“We have produced youth and women farmers that were unemployed but now stand on their own and are now employers of labour,” he emphasized.
Mr. Ugbe, when asked which criteria was used in selecting beneficiaries in his state, explained that it was transparent and nepotism did not play any role.
CADP Kaduna State Coordinator, Dalhatu Mustapha, explained that besides the 1,100 beneficiaries of the project, 3,600 others benefited from the Commodity Interest Group (CIG), which primarily dealt with various farms input, technology adoption and intervention support in the state.
Mr. Mustapha explained that the Aggregation Centres in the state have reached 53 per cent construction and are expected to be 100 per cent complete before May 31, 2017.
“We visited the three Aggregation Centres in Saminaka, Giwa and Kachia and the contractors assured us that they were working day and night in ensuring they meet the deadline.