World Bank pledges to support FG’s agric restoration effort in North East


The World Bank has promised to support the Federal Government and others relevant agencies to restore agricultural activities in the North East of the country.
Dr Adetunji Oredipe, the World Bank Task Team Leader (TTL) of Fadama III-Additional Financing (AF), said this in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday in Abuja.
NAN reports that Fadama projects in Nigeria are being supported by the World Bank and the Federal Government.
According to Oredipe, the support aims to ensure food security and better livelihood for citizens in the affected areas through the Fadama development project.
He said that the Federal Government had launched a bigger study to look into the situation in the region in order to restore livelihood of the people.
``One aspect of that bigger study is to restore agricultural activities in the region and we are working on the Fadama platform as an institution to assist the government.
``Fadama has great opportunity to deliver at anytime; we are using instruments on the ground in terms of project management, institutional arrangement, clear understanding of issues to restore agricultural livelihood to the communities.
The team leader explained that the setting of the Food and livelihood project would be slightly different because they are going to be working in the conflict sensitive environment.
``We are putting a lot of safeguard and caution into moving into the region but we are convinced with the package we have in our hands.
``We will be working with households and from the theoretical point of view we are targeting more than 24,000 households.
``There will be community action plan for each community in the region, which involves some elements of infrastructure that will support agricultural activities,’’ he said.
Oredipe further said that the World Bank intervention was spurious in the region with ongoing Additional Financing projects like social, health, education programmes, among others.
`` We have a bigger programme, which is a 200-million dollar intervention that is going to be more comprehensive and deal with the issue in that region.
``We believe that what we are doing is going to be complementary and add value to what the Federal Government is going to do in the north east.
NAN reports that the programme officially started on March 1 and it would be presented to the Board of Trustees of the World Bank in June for approval.
NAN also reports that the beneficiaries of the 50 million dollar project are Borno, Yobe, Taraba, Bauchi and Gombe States. 

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