The Agric Budget Plus Cluster, a coalition of NGOs, has advocated for a five per cent increase in the budgetary allocation to the agricultural sector, for increased food production.

The organisations made the call at a capacity-building workshop on ‘gender-responsive participatory budget’ on Wednesday in Abakaliki, noting that the initiative would address food insecurity.

Mr Eni Elechi, Programme Director, Cara Development Foundation (CDF), the anchor organisation based in Owerri, said that the project being implemented in the South-East was aimed to increase food availability through the right budgeting.

According to him, the project is implemented under the Strengthening Civic Advocacy and Local Engagement (SCALE), in partnership with Palladium, supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Elechi noted that gender-responsive participatory budgeting (GRPB) was aimed at addressing the issues of low budgeting and the need for strengthening agricultural stakeholders’ value chain on gender-responsive budgeting.

He explained that the training was to deepen the knowledge of the participants in understanding that the budget should be inclusive; it also addressed the need for everybody to be captured in the budget.

Elechi further explained that the training was to ensure that budget lines were drawn for the different stakeholders in the agric value chain.

He added that it was to ensure that the budget lines, with the advocacy on increasing the agricultural budget to five per cent, would be achieved.“

“The essence of the advocacy is to address food insecurity and poverty reduction for small-holder farmers and also large-scale farmers.

” The project is funded by USAID in partnership with Palladium on the SCALE project, Cara Development Foundation is the anchor organisation while four organisations in the coalition form the cluster.”

A participant, Mr Chijoke Ogbodo, Director of Planning in the Ebonyi Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, in an interview, described the advocacy workshop as timely.

He stressed that increased budgetary allocation to the agricultural sector would lead to more food availability, job creation and foreign exchange earning.

He said that agriculture was the mainstay of the country’s economy and hence should be given priority by both the state and federal governments.

“The Agric Budget Plus Cluster is here to advocate for an increase in the budgetary allocation to the agricultural sector by at least, five per cent, and I do know that agric is just the bedrock of all that we do.

” I said so because when you have not eaten, you won’t be able to do anything but, when you eat, you will be able to do a lot; they have paid an advocacy visit to us as a ministry and we are going to support the project in every way we can.

“When there is enough allocation to the sector, farmers both men, women and those living with disabilities, will be able to access agric funds and farm inputs and in doing so, there will be an increase in food production,” Ogbodo said.

Another participant, Mrs Chinyere Ituma, expressed delight to the organisers, saying that there was a need to increase allocation given to the agric sector to spur food production.

She said that a country could only be said to be great when it could feed its citizens and had enough to export to earn foreign exchange.

“Agric sector is the sector that sustains the rest of the economy, we depend on the agric sector for food and to earn a living and because of this, I think that an increase in budgetary allocation, as being advocated, will do us a lot of good,” she said.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the coalition comprises Community and Youth Development Initiatives (CYDI) Imo state, Neighbourhood Initiative for Women Advancement (NIWA) –Ebonyi.

Others are Vicar Hope Foundation (VHF) in Abia state, Computer-Aided Design (CAD) consulting, an information technology (IT) specialist organisation, and CARA Development Foundation which is the Anchor organisation based in Imo state.