Improving the agricultural sector’s performance is vital to growth and poverty reduction through its direct impact on food security, building resilience, livelihood enhancement and job creation, especially for women and youth. This is evident in the recent policy thrust of the current administration which has also promoted the sector as the key driver of her economic diversification strategy. Interestingly, the agricultural sector presently contributes over 22 per cent of the Nigeria’s GDP and employs over 70 per cent of the population. Recalling that budget is the key instrument of government for the allocation of resources to various sectors of the economy, NANTS as part of the Voices for Food Security (VFS) campaign under the theme ‘United for Food’ engages the government to improve the quantity and quality of investment in the agricultural sector through the instrumentality of the budget in line with the Malabo Declaration that requires national governments to commit at least 10% of their National budget to the agricultural sector. NANTS had conducted appraisals of 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 proposed budgets for agriculture and organized series of capacity building workshop for right holders on agriculture budget advocacy. NANTS inputs has somewhat changed the pattern of cut and paste/ritualistic budgeting through analysis of the federal budgets especially with the Parliament and Ministry of agriculture as the major focus. Obvious savings have been made through the slashing of frivolous budgeted funds when proposed budgets and eventual appropriated agric budgets are compared.
However, to take this further, NANTS marked the world food day through active citizenship with the popular veteran celebrity, Kanayo O Kanayo.
