Nigerian govt rejects claim on exclusion of North-East from special agro-industrial processing zones

The Federal Government has debunked a claim on the exclusion of the North-East from the Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones (SAPZ) programme.

The North-East Caucus in the National Assembly had during the week alleged that the zone has been “completely excluded” from the SAPZ.

The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Abubakar Kyari, made the clarification in a chat with journalists on Saturday in Abuja.

The SAPZ is a strategic initiative of the Federal Government aimed at promoting the agricultural business in the country.

Kyari said the project is a federal government-enabled initiative with subscription by the state governments.

He said the initiative was to ensure that all segments of the country and all relevant stakeholders and groupings were carried along in the design and implementation of government programmes.

According to him, the SAPZ programme was inaugurated in 2022 based on its conceptual design of Phase 1 in 2019.

The minister said: “All state governments are expected to individually express Interest in the programme.

“For clarity, the following steps were taken to arrive at the programme as it is today: The selection process.

” In 2019, each state governor was notified in writing to express interest with an attached eligibility criteria that will enable them to participate in phase 1 of the programme.

“Upon receipt of their expression of interest, a joint team comprising the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, the Federal Ministry of Finance, and the African Development Bank conducted a mission to each of the states to verify the fulfillment of the eligibility criteria as the selection process.

“This stage got eight states that qualified, namely – Kaduna, Kano, Kwara, Oyo, Ogun, Imo, Cross River, and FCT.

READ ALSO: AfDB approves $210m for Nigeria’s special agro-industrial processing zones

” However, upon the assumption of office by this administration, we reviewed the development potential of this programme under the renewed hope agenda of Mr. President and decided that no state will be left behind.

“Vice–President Kashim Shettima’s first international mission was to Rome, the Food System summit, where he galvanised more funding to enable us to take more states.

”He embarked on a second mission to the World Food Price meeting in Des Moines, Iowa, United States, where he obtained a commitment of $1 billion from the President of the African Development Bank (AfDB) for the sole purpose of bringing on board more states.

“The SAPZ is a Subsidiary Loan Agreement Programme, which means that the Federal Government onboards the obtained loans to the state for the implementation of the programme.

” Considering this is a loan, it is solely the discretion of the state to participate or not, and we have cases where states have not expressed interest

”I therefore also want to appeal to the legislators, especially the North-East NASS Caucus, to appeal to the other governors of Taraba, Yobe and Adamawa to reinvigorate their interest in the programme and to ensure they fulfill the eligibility criteria for the second phase.”

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