The World Bank on Monday said it has earmarked N2.4 billion to develop agriculture in Lagos, Cross River, Kano, Kaduna and Enugu States.

Dr Lucas Akapa, the bank’s project monitoring team leader, said this during a courtesy call on Mr Enock Ajiboso, the Lagos State Commissioner for Agriculture and Cooperativesin Ikeja.

According to him, the states are currently benefiting from the World Bank assisted Commercial Agriculture Development Project (CADP).

”It is meant to achieve food sustainability for the citizens through the involvement of Public Private Participation arrangement.

“Actually, the project is making progress toward achieving its developmental objective because when a project starts, you need time to prepare the ground to move on.  “The personnel and offices in five states are place,’’ he said.
Akapa said each state was expected to focus its activities on production and commercialisation of agricultural produce and the development of  infrastructure, rural network of roads and energy.

He advised them to increase their efforts on the infrastructural development, saying “improvement is required in this area for this project to achieve its goal.”
Ajiboso, in his response, reiterated the state government’s commitment to executing the project.

“ This has been further demonstrated by the State Executive Council’s unanimous approval of  N168 million as the state’s 2010 counterpart contribution to the project,” he said.