The Federal Executive Council has approved the construction of the corporate headquarters of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural development.
The minister of agriculture, Mohammad Abubakar, who disclosed this to State House Correspondents, said an initial sum of N6 billion would be used to commence the construction of the new headquarters.
Abubakar said the proposed headquarters would be a 10 story building and would be called Agriculture House.
He said: “The memo we presented was for the construction of our corporate headquarters here in Abuja. Since the relocation of the ministry to Abuja over 30 years ago, we’ve not had a corporate headquarters. We are currently using an office of the Federal capital Territory Administration which is just About three floors and cannot accommodate the entire ministry.
“We have about four departments which are outside the main ministry.
“So, the Federal Capital Territory Administration has allocated a plot to us in the cadastral zone, totalling about 1.84 hectors at a very strategic place for the construction of a 10 story building which we will call Agriculture House.”
He said they had purchased a building in Abuja some years back but it later turned out not to be adequate for the services required thus, it will be sold and the proceeds would be added to a budgetary provisions (2022 and 2023) of the sum of N6 billion to commence the project.
He further added that the ministry will source for more funds through intervention from the presidency and other sources, to complete the project.
On the rising cost of rice he said a lot is being done to ensure availability of the product, to further cut down its price since Nigeria is the number one producer of rice in Africa.
“There are 10 rice mills that are being constructed under a Public Private Partnership arrangement and the President has given us intervention to complete those mills and we will commission some of them before the end of this administration,” he said.
