Kwara govt clarifies alleged spending of N800m on ranch project that does not exist

By Mustapha Mustapha On Feb 13, 2025

Kwara, honorarium, security votes, insecurity , Mahmuda — Kwara State Gov. AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq

Kwara State Government said it expended N29,000,000 in 2022 for essential services (topographic survey, environmental impacts assessment, and drone flights across Malete site) at the Malete new site for the Kwara Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zone project.

It said this expenditure is dated 28 February 2022.

This was contained in a statement issued by the State Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, Oloruntoyosi Thomas, on Wednesday in reaction to a news report on the state government’s alleged spending on a non-existent ranch project.

The government claimed it did not spend a kobo on any ranch project between 2022 and 2023, as was erroneously claimed in the media.

Recalls that it was reported that Kwara State Government, led by Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq budgeted a total of over 6 billion naira in the 2022 and 2023 budgets for the establishment of a ranch in Malete town, Moro Local government area of Kwara State to boost the agricultural sector in the state.

According to Africast, a review of the budget performance document prepared by the state government for the two years confirmed that the sum of N889,005,731 was released for the project, an indication that the construction of the ranch project had commenced. However, investigations by the newspaper revealed that there is no ranching project in Malete town.

When AfriCast reached out to the Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development in the state, Oloruntoyosi Thomas, in the report, she was not available for comments. Neither text nor WhatsApp messages sent to her were answered at press time.

Also, Rafiu Ajakaye, the press secretary to Kwara State Governor neither answered calls nor responded to SMS sent to him as of press time. All subsequent remainders sent to both the commissioner of Agriculture and Press Secretary to the governor were not attended to.

However, the state government statement said the closest volume of government expenditure in that category was the payment on 9 October 2023 of N779,506,155.08 counterpart funds for the Special Agroprocessing Zone (SAPZ).

SAPZ is an ongoing five-year project funded by the African Development Bank and Islamic Development Bank. At the moment under SAPZ, there are four Agricultural Transformation Centres (ATCs) in Baruten (Okuta), Kaiama (Kaiama), Ifelodun (Olodan), and Asa (Afon). All the ATCs serve as production and aggregation centres, while Malete is the industrial hub.

The description in the budget for this expenditure is ‘Federal Government Contributions for Livestock Development (State Govt)’. These livestock programmes included L-PRES and SAPZ, a component of which ranching/grazing reserve is. This is normal in the national charts of accounts format. It is disturbing that the medium refused to mention SAPZ (the real basis for the closest expenditure) in its report, even when not a dime was actually spent on ranch.

This clarification is for innocent members of the public who may have been misled by the mischievous publication. The intention of such publications is neither to inform nor encourage healthy debates around public expenditure, but to give negative portrayals of anything Nigerian and its government.

In this age of disinformation and cultural imperialism that are often carefully packaged in flowery ways, the public is urged to be wary of these supposedly ‘reputable’ platforms that encourage lazy and unethical practices and conjure up different things to undermine governments and public servants.