Media Report Misleading, No Money Has Been Spent On Proposed Malete Ranch- Kwara Govt

Kwara State Government clarified and asserted on Wednesday that contrary to the media report claiming that over 800 million naira has been committed to an ongoing ranch project in the state between 2022 and 2023, no money has been spent on the project in question.

Oloruntoyosi Thomas, who is the state Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development asserted in a statement she issued in Ilorin and made available to Team@orientactualmags.com that there was no misuse of public funds while explaining the roles of the African Development Bank and Islamic Development Bank.

‘The only related expenditure in the said years was N29,000,000 spent in 2022 for essential services (topographic survey, environmental impacts assessment, and drone flights across the Malete site) at the Malete new site for the Kwara Special Agro Industrial Processing Zone project. This expenditure is dated 28 February, 2022.

The closest volume of government’s 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’ the statement added-Team@orientactualmags.com   Do you have any information you wish to share with us? Do you want us to cover your event or programme? Kindly send SMS to 08059100286, 09094171980 or get in touch via orientactualmag@gmail.com.  Thank you.