I work with Planning and Budget Commission (formerly Ministry of Budget and Planning), Kaduna State. People always think that there is no work in the Ministry, I thought so too. I thought I will be going to the office once a week, so I started making plans of doing other jobs. But my impression was soon corrected when I was posted to my department, Development Aid Coordination (DAC). The officers in my department work like bankers, infact they have made me forget that I am a Corp member.
Let's say you are an NGO or a private individual or an investor or who ever you are and you want to hold any event or any project whatsoever that will foster the development of the state, you must come through DAC. As the name entails, Development Aid Coordination Department help development partners to achieve their aim in the State.
N/B: Development partners is the name given to the organization that wants to aid in the development of the state. E.g NGOs as described above.
There are thousands of Development Partners that come in to Nigeria and Kaduna is not left out. So everyday we have meetings with one development partner or the other and report back to the government.
When I started serving in DAC, I will just sit in the office, while the officers will attend meetings and give me their report to type, I wasn't engaged. But as a result of my commitment, my Director, Mrs. Phoebe picked interest in me, she started sending me to represent her in meetings. I am just a Corp Member oo, there are officers and principal planning officers, but she will call me, little me to represent her, her shoes are too big for me to wear but God have been faithful.
Now I'm drifting, I just wanted to gist you guys about my day while giving you a background of how my work is. So today, my Director asked me represent her in a meeting while she attend another. Today's meeting was on agricultural development. I admire Kaduna State Government's effort to make the lives of their citizens better and to eradicate poverty. In order to reduce importation of agricultural produce such as rice, ginger, tomatoes, Soya bean etc, the government decided to lease lands to farmers and also give them capital to start cultivating the crops of their choice. Synergos Development Innovations is an NGO that is aimed at transforming agriculture in Nigeria and they partner with the government to achieve this aim and today's meeting was organized by them..
What they did was to invite farmers of different agricultural produce to discuss an appropriate business plan/cost of production, the NGO will take it back to the government and release the funds for the farmers. I was able to make new friends (mostly elderly), and I enjoyed the meeting. I learnt the various processes of farming, the startup capital I need to start each business just incase I want to start. The decisions made in the meeting is what the State will work with. Let me share the photos with you guys.
I joined the rice farmers group to come up with the cost of production for rice.
Ginger farmers group.
Soya bean farmers group
Maize and sorghum group
My new friend, He is a rice farmer. He wanted me to learn Hausa language within 1hr. A funny man, there was no dull moment with him.
My colleague, Aliyu and my hausa translator.
They call us twins.
At the end of the group work, each group presented the cost of production of each crop to Synergos, the NGO will submit it to the government and the funds will be released to the farmers to start.. This will make food available to Nigerians and reduce dependency on imported foods. My job here, is to write a comprehensive report of everything discussed in this meeting, submit to my director, she will submit to commissioner and then to the governor, so I will need to write a very good report, so that the governor won't read trash.
At the end of the meeting, we went for lunch
All pictures were taken with my phone
This is basically what I do everyday. Stay tuned for more stories in my diary.
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Thanks for reading