On Wednesday, Kwara State Government clarified the alleged spending of N800m on a ranch project that does not exist as reported in the media.
The government made this known in a statement issued to newsmen by the State Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, Oloruntoyosi Thomas.
According to the statement, ‘No kobo spent yet on proposed Malete ranch’ as erroneously reported.
It could be recalled that Africast on 11 February 2025 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 the report, 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, indicating that 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, in the statement, Kwara state government said 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 centers, 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 programs 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.”
