The IFAD-assisted Community-Based Natural Resource Management Programme (CBNRMP) has appealed to governors of the nine Niger Delta states to pay their counterpart funds promptly to enable the programme to achieve its goal.

Mrs Irene Jumbo-Ibeakuzie, the National Programme Coordinator, made the appeal in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Libreville on Sunday. Jumbo-Ibeakuziesaid that the non-payment of counterpart funds by some of the states was jeopardising the effective implementation of the programme.

The affected states are Abia, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Edo, Imo, Ondo and Rivers. She urged, particularly, state governments which had invested in huge agricultural project, to partner with the programme to ensure that the projects produced maximum results. Jumbo-Ibeakuzie cited the Songhai Centre, established by the Rivers Government, as one project that should be used as a springboard to alleviate poverty in communities in the state, in partnership with the CBNRMP.

“The Songhai farm in Rivers State, for example, it is a programme like ours that they can use to step it down to the rural communities and to the rural farmers, who are well known to us, and at a very cheap cost to them. You can have a large programme but if you are not able to step it down, the dividend of that project would not be fully realised. So, we appeal to them to pay their counterpart funds to enable us to create wealth and impact on the livelihoods of farmers.”

The coordinator said that the programme was promoting agriculture as a business venture rather than for subsistence, stressing that the era of subsistence farming was over.

According to her, the payment of counterpart funds will enable the programme to access IFAD funds to be able to implement projects that will create wealth, reduce unemployment and crime as well as stem rural urban migration. Furthermore, she said that it would assist in empowering women to engage in economic activities that would enhance nation building.

“We are preaching business agriculture in which there is profitability, we want to create wealth through agriculture. We want to create employment through agriculture and if they pay their counterpart fund, it will reduce the unemployment rate in the rural area; it will stem rural-urban migration and there will be food basket.

“Crime will also be reduced because the youths will be too busy to want to do any other thing that will be of high risk to their lives and the women will empowered to do what they know best which is nation building.” Jumbo-Ibeakuziesaid that another major challenge confronting the programme, and which had been attributed to design error, was the allocation of 45 per cent funding ratio to the local governments. She explained that the IFAD Supervision Mission had discovered that local governments could not afford it due to limited funds at their disposal.

“At the time of design, there was an assumption that local governments would fund 45 per cent of the community development projects. But you and I know the situation of the local governments, especially in the Niger Delta region. During the Mid-Term Review, the Supervision team identified the problem as a design error and the Federal Government had applied to IFAD for a re-allocation and amendment of the loan to reflect a change in the funding ratio.”

She said that if IFAD agreed to the request and increased its own contribution to 45 per cent while the local governments contributed 22.5 per cent, the problem would be resolved.

Niger Delta Development Commission, a strategic partner in the programme also contributes 22.5 per cent while communities provide 10 per cent in cash or kind. She described the IFAD programme as a veritable platform for knowledge harvesting, which empowers programme managers for better performance.

The goal of the programme is to improve the standard of living and quality of life for at least 400,000 poor rural people in the nine Niger Delta States. With a total project cost of 78.4 million dollars, including 15-million-dollar IFAD loan, the programme which started running in 2005, is scheduled to close in 2013.