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The federal government has denied claims about northeast exclusion of the Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zone (SAPZ) program.
Northeast Caucus in the National Assembly for a week accused that the zone had been “fully excluded” from SAPZ.
The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Abubakar Kyari, made clarification in a chat with journalists on Saturday in Abuja.
SAPZ is a federal government’s strategic initiative aimed at promoting agricultural businesses in this country.
Kyari said the project was an initiative that supported the federal government by subscribing by the state government.
He said this initiative was to ensure that all state segments and all relevant grouping and grouping were carried out in the design and implementation of government programs.
According to him, the SAPZ program was inaugurated in 2022 based on phase 1 conceptual design in 2019.
The minister said: “All state governments are expected to individually express interest in this program.
“For clarity, the following steps are taken to arrive at the current program: the selection process.
“In 2019, each state governor was told in writing to express interest with the attached eligibility criteria that would allow them to participate in phase 1 of the program.
“After receiving an expression of their interest, the joint team consisting of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, the Federal Ministry of Finance, and the African Development Bank conducted a mission to each state to verify the fulfillment of the feasibility criteria as a selection process.
“This stage gets eight states that meet the requirements, namely – Kaduna, Kano, Kwara, Oyo, Ogun, IMO, Cross River, and FCT.
“However, on the assumption of the office by this government, we review the potential for the development of this program under the renewable hope agenda from Mr. President and decided that no country will be left behind.
“The first international mission of Vice President Kashim Shettima is for Rome, the food system summit, where he galvanizes more funds to allow us to take more states.
“He began the second mission for the meeting of world food prices in Des Moines, Iowa, United States, where he received a commitment of $ 1 billion from the President of the African Development Bank (AFDB) with one -the purpose of bringing more states.
“SAPZ is a subsidiary’s loan agreement program, which means that the federal government indicates loans obtained to the country for program implementation.
“Considering this is a loan, solely it is the state policy to participate or not, and we have a case where the state has not stated interest
Therefore I also want to attract legislators, especially the northeast nass caucus, to attract other governors from Taraba, Yobe and Adamawa to revive their interests in the program and to ensure they meet the eligibility criteria for the second phase. “
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