Nigerian Newsday

By Titus Mangut & Anthony Adgidgi

Nasarawa State would participate actively in the National Special Programme for Food Security (NSPFS), the State Commissioner for Agriculture, Hajiya Aishatu Rufa’i has said.

Hajiya Aishatu stated this during the state’s 2006 annual planning, monitoring and evaluation agriculture workshop which was held in Lafia last week.

She said the state government has put in place machinery to ensure maximum participation in the proposed Fadama III and the expanssion of the programme.

She said six additional local governments in the state been selected to participate in the expansion of the programme.

She said in order to meet the millennium Development Goat, the State Government has embarked on several projects which include beef processing plant at Massaka-Karu, Beniseed cleaning plant at Doma and Youth Empowerment programme at the total cost of about N550 million with the aim to reduce poverty and hunger, among the people in the state.

Hajiya Aishatu called on the participants at the workshop to contribute meaningfully in their various sectors to reposition the agriculture development projects in the state.

The commissioner also highlighted the contribution at the Nasarawa State Government to agriculture development which she said included, procurement and distributed of farm inputs especially fertilizer to farmers at 25% subsidized rate.

She maintained that the resolution arrived at the workshop would go along way in bettering the lost of agricultural development programmes in the state.

In his keynote address, the Director Projects Coordinating Unit (PCU) represented by Eng. Gabriel Afu said the functions of planning monitor and evaluation include short and long time plan, assessing performance against set targets, examing projects. Contributions to the nation’s economy as well as capturing the overall effect and impact of project on targeted beneficiaries.

He said the theme for this year workshop "participatory PME in the context of community Driven Development" was a build up to that of last year annual workshop held in Bauchi and therefore implored the experts and participants tod elibrate and produce the desire results.

The Programme manager of NADP, Mr. Umaru Ada Gwamna in his address said the PME data collection was an important input to the National Agriculture Data Bank used for sectoral planning and police formation.

He then charged the projects coordinator unit and all agriculture development not to relent in their effort at generating reliable and timely data.

Mr. Gwamna also called on the participants to thoroughly discuss the theme and come out with resolutions that will make participatory monitoring and evaluation effective in the ADP/PCU systems.