Nigerian govt approves N6bn for construction of agric ministry building

The Federal Executive Council (FEC) on Wednesday approved the sum of N6 billion for the construction of the corporate headquarters of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Mohammad Abubakar, disclosed this to journalists at the end of the FEC meeting chaired by President Muhammadu Buhari at the State House, Abuja.

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 have not had a corporate headquarters.

“We are currently using an office of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) 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 FCT administration has allocated a plot to us in the cadastral zone, totalling about 1.84 hectares at a very strategic place for the construction of a 10-storey building which we will call Agriculture House.

“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.”