By Peter Duru, Makurdi

The Federal Government of Nigeria/International Fund for Agricultural Development-Value Chain Development Programme, FG/IFAD-VCDP, supported agricultural interventions and activities in Benue state is to gulp over N4.8billion in 2025.

This was made known by the Benue State Program Coordinator, SPC, Dr. Emmanuel Igbaukum while presenting the 2024 scorecard and 2025 Work Plan and Budget of the programme during the state’s Steering Committee meeting of IFAD/VCDP in Makurdi.

He said: “Today we have received an approval from IFAD to support activities across Benue state in 2025 with a total budget of N4,898,336,252.”

He explained that IFAD financed activities would worth over N4.2b while the state government’s counterpart fund and contributions by beneficiaries would worth over N682million.

“We expect that we would be able to fund this activities and hit 100 percent this year because this year IFAD and the Federal Ministry of Agriculture are going to give us approval on our Annual Work Plan and Budget on time and there will be no excuse of any delay in implementation.”

Reviewing the 2024 performance of the programme, Dr. Igbaukum disclosed that between January 1, 2024 and December 31, 2024 the programme disbursed over N1.9billion “from all financiers representing 69.2 percent of the approved 2024 Annual Work Plan and Budget, which totals NGN2,751,766,241.”

He stated that physically the programme successfully implemented 214 of its activities out of 237 activities planned for the year 2024 “as at December 2024 we were able to achieve 90 percent of the programme activities as designed in the Annual Work Plan Budget.

“We were able to do that because of the first implementation strategy IFAD has had and the show of commitment of the Governor Hyacinth Alia-led government. The Governor paid the counterpart fund of 2024.

“The activities we implemented in 2024 ranged from supporting the communities with Processing Centres for rice and cassava and equipping them. We have been able to support some of the communities with Aggregation Centres that help them to address issues of post harvest losses. We also supported production, we supported youths and women to acquire trainings and some entrepreneurship skills and we also supported them with Starter Packs.

“We did not stop at that because we are interested in the sustainability of the programme. So we have supported over 3,000 farmers with different capacity building ranging from good Agronomy practice to financial literacy training. This helped the farmers involve themselves in group savings. And with this group savings within our own beneficiaries, they have been able to raise over N50million. This helps them to service their members.”

The SPC also pointed out some of the challenges confronting the programme including the surge in the prices of inputs, the high cost of equipment for the processing centres which were becoming too exorbitant for farmers as well as the herdsmen induced insecurity hampering dry season farming.

The Commissioner of Agriculture and Food Security, Prof Moses Ogbaji, who commended the programme for the sucesses it had recorded in the state, lauded Governor Hyacinth Alia for approving the release of the counterfunds for the programme.

While expressing satisfaction with the success recorded, Prof Ogbaji said the SPC has presented his scorecard for the last year and I am quite satisfied with what was achieved. We have now made amendments where necessary so that there could be improvements. Basically I am satisfied with what has been achieved.”

The Principle Private Secretary, PPS, to the Governor, Dr. Emmanuel Chenge lauded the impact the programme was making in the state and urged all hands to be on deck to ensure greater success of the programme in state.

Representatives of the various MDAs who made inputs on how the programme would record more successes in the state promised continued support for the programme.