One of the most persistent themes in the Agricultural Production Survey reports of the National Agricultural Extension and Research Liaison Service (NAERLS) of the Nigerian Federal Ministry of Agriculture
and Rural Development (FMARD) and Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) is the persistent lack of funding for agricultural extension activities of agricultural development projects (ADPs), the principal agricultural extension entity in each state, for most states in Nigeria. A lack of funds for implementation of agricultural programs is not unique to state governments, but also applies to the FMARD. In this poor funding environment, the FMARD has to choose amongst activities. These funding constraints have meant that worthwhile initiatives have been abandoned. A key example is the non-implementation of an agricultural census in 2007 because Nigerian government funds were not provided as counterpart funding to those provided by international donors. The Nigerian government budget, in which most federal government funding is obtained from fees and rents from the oil industry, is tightly aligned with movements in the global oil price. Since the global oil price is exogenous and subject to intertemporal fluctuations, the federal budget tends to vary and cannot feasibly be stabilized under the current funding structure. Due to the organizational arrangement of the Nigerian government, in which the majority share of state government budgets come from federal allocations and states have relatively small tax bases, the intertemporal variation in the federal budget has large implications for sustainability and effective implementation of state level government programs. This research aims at investigating macroeconomic factors that are key for explaining the implementation and sustainability of publicly funded agricultural programs in the context of oil price shocks, a small tax base, and financial market distortions.
Research Team Leaders
Dr George Mavrotas (IFPRI)
Dr Patrick Hatzenbuehler (IFPRI)
Research Team Members
Professor Zakari Abdulsalam (Ahmadu Bello University)
Dr. Makama Aliyu Saleh (Ahmadu Bello University)
Mrs Jamila Rabe Mani (Ahmadu Bello University)
