517 Vulnerable Residents Receive Grants from FCTA

By: Prudence Okonna

The Federal Capital Territory Administration, (FCTA), has disbursed grants to 517 vulnerable FCT residents, who make up the second batch of the FCT FADAMA CARES program. 

The FCT Minister of State, Dr. Ramatu Tijjani-Aliyu, during a symbolic disbursement held in Gwagwalada Area Council, emphasized that the event was another significant indicator of the unflinching determination of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration to take 100 million Nigerians out of poverty and to generally improve livelihoods – particularly for poor and vulnerable households in Nigeria. 

Tijjani-Aliyu revealed that earlier in June this year the flag-off ceremony of the program was performed in Kwali, while pledging that the FCT Administration would continue to commit ample human and financial resources towards ensuring poverty reduction and improvement of livelihoods for poor and vulnerable agricultural households in the FCT.

“The program is deliberately designed to support the recovery of livelihood activities of poor and vulnerable persons engaged in agricultural value chains with special consideration to women and unemployed youths. 

Tijjani-Aliyu further revealed that the FCT Administration has allocated the sum of $4.5 million to the FCT FADAMA CARES program to implement three Disbursement Linked Indicators (DLIs) out of a total allocation of $15 million made available to the FCTA by the World Bank for implementation of the program.

She, therefore, called on all the beneficiaries to make judicious use of the grants by supporting their farming activities, which would facilitate their recovery from the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, thus improving livelihoods and contributing to the attainment of increased food security and safe functioning of food supply chain in the FCT.

Also speaking, the FCTA Permanent Secretary, Mr. Adesola Olusade, noted that the federal government and the FCT Administration have invested time and resources in the FADAMA CARES program and it has started yielding tangible results. 

He said the positive results could be attested to by the excellent result achieved by the FCT during the program eligibility assessment exercise conducted by the World Bank where the FCT scored 88% which placed the FCT within the rank of the very best performing states in the country.

Olusade called on the FCT Agriculture and Rural Development Secretariat and other stakeholders to re-double their efforts towards ensuring the successful implementation of the program in the FCT to enable the administration to reinvigorate households and small businesses in FCT ravaged by the devastating impact of the Covid19 pandemic.

In his remarks, Secretary Agriculture and Rural Development Secretariat, Mallam Abubakar Ibrahim, reiterated that this achievement is another significant milestone in the efforts of the FCT Administration toward supporting the attainment of food and nutritional security in the Federal Capital Territory.

The items distributed include fertilizers, seeds and agrochemicals, sprayers and personal protective equipment for crop farmers, day-old chicks and feeds for poultry farmers, juveniles and feeds for fish farmers, goats for livestock farmers, grinding machines for women processors, and motorized produce threshers for groups of unemployed youths.