Don’t ignore flood alerts, FG warns states, others

Senate okays establishment of Agricultural Development Fund

The Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency has warned states and other stakeholders in the building and environment sectors to play their roles well to mitigate flooding this year.

The Director-General of the agency, Clement Nze, who gave the warning in Abuja yesterday, said previous attempts to get the state government along in its flood forecast efforts had not yielded the desire results.

The DG, who said 317 local governments in 36 states and the FCT were affected by flood last year, added that large areas of farms were destroyed in Kebbi, Jigawa, Kano among others.

He urged the state and local governments to, among other things, begin the clearing of drainages and canals as well as encourage people living along the water-ways to relocate to safer areas before the rains start fully.

The Senate yesterday passed a bill seeking to establish the National Agricultural Development Fund.

This followed consideration of the report of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, chaired by Senator Abdullahi Adamu (APC, Nasarawa West).

Adamu, while presenting the committee’s report, explained that the purpose for the establishment of the Fund was to provide finance to support the strategic aspect of Agricultural Development in Nigeria.

He noted that Nigeria was yet to fully implement the 2003 MAPUTO Declaration on Agriculture requiring States Parties to allocate 10 percent of its National budget to Agricultural Development.

“If this was done, Agricultural Research and Development,

Food Production and Food Security would have witnessed a major leap,” Adamu said.

Adamu said the Fund was empowered to provide emergency support funding for Agricultural control access to finance trans-boundary animal disease outbreak; as well as support service through micro finance and collaborate with development partners to support food security and Agricultural modernization.