The Federal Government has said the implementation of the National Agricultural Data Management Information System (NADMIS), will strengthen the data information system for policy, planning and tracking of the Sustainable Development Goals in the agricultural sector.
The permanent secretary of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Ernest Umakhihe, stated this during the national validation of country data set for 3rd biennial review exercise on the implementation of Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme yesterday in Abuja.
He said NADMIS would act as an instrument for the resuscitation and revitalization of data and information services at both the federal and state ministries of agriculture in the country.
Umakhihe who was represented by the ministry’s director, federal department of agriculture, Mrs Karima Babaginda, said preparation had advanced for Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to facilitate the second phase of the Global Strategy to Improve Agricultural and Rural Statistics in Nigeria.
“The Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) remains the initiative of the African heads of states launched and adopted in 2003 in Maputo Mozambique, with a commitment to dedicating 10 per cent of the annual national budget and ensuring 6 per cent annual growth in the sector for enhanced public spending, food security and poverty alleviation in the continent,” he said.
He explained that an integral part of the CAADP’s implementation process was a continuous sector performance appraisal through the platforms of a national annual joint sector review and a continental biennial review, adding the country’s average performances at the inaugural and second biennial review exercises were attributed to the issues of data gaps.
“Nigeria signed the CAADP Compact on October 30, 2009, prepared the first National Agricultural Investment Plan (NAIP I) 2011 – 2014 in December 2010 and established CAADP Country Team Structure for implementation. Similarly, the 2nd NAIP-2017-2020 was developed and implemented under the sector framework of the Agricultural Promotion Policy.
“The ministry in collaboration with the Central Bank of Nigeria, commodity associations and agricultural platform companies launched the Agric for Food and Jobs Programme, a sectoral component of the 2020 Nigeria Economic Sustainability Plan, to support smallholder farmers with inputs for enhanced productivity.
“The Federal Government is steadily dedicating huge resources to the development of rural infrastructure, the training of youths to serve as extension agents, the provision of agricultural machinery to expand cultivable land area, the implementation of the National Livestock Transformation Plan and the acceleration of fisheries and aquaculture production in the country,” he added.
Umakhihe urged the stakeholders at the forum to produce a credible and complete data set that would enable Nigeria to be on track in achieving the commitments for the implementation of the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme.
“We are to use our experience and resource to assess, input and endorse the country’s populated data set in the biennial review reporting template before we submit it to the African Union Commission through the Economic Community for West African States,” he added.
In his address, the director, planning and policy coordination department in the ministry, Mr.Zubairu Abdullahi said “Nigeria had since 2003 been part of the conceptualization, adoption and implementation of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme [CAADP], initiated by the African Union under the New Partnership for Africa Development to increase public spending in agriculture, accelerate sector growth and track the entire process through robust data generation for a continental biennial performance review.”
Represented by the department’s deputy director, Mr. Ibrahim Tanimu, Abdullahi pointed out that to make the country achieve a better result, state and non-state actors’ synergy was highly required by harnessing all available data in the country, saying the validation exercise should be focused on the policies, strategies and programmes that had been executed along research development, value chain, financial inclusion and agribusiness undertakings to diversify the economy, create wealth for Nigerians and foster national development.
Earlier, the CAADP focal point officer in Nigeria, Mr. Mohammed Ibrahim, urged the Federal Government to increase the agricultural sector budgetary provision to meet the 10 per cent of the total annual national budget as recommended and adopted by the African heads of states in Maputo 2003.
A statement signed for the ministry’s director of information by the senior information officer, Mrs. Obe Mabel, said he tasked government to allocate more funds in the sector to address areas of investment that would increase the agricultural GDP to at least 6 per cent.
