Six states in Nigeria could benefit from a new $500 million loan from the World Bank for the construction of rural roads.

“The rural roads construction project is expected to increase farmers’ access to farm inputs and markets, thus reducing post-harvest losses, and the loan is such that participating state governments will pay 5% counterpart funding while the federal government is to make a 95% refund,” said Ularamu Ubandoma, national coordinator, Rural Access Mobility Project (RAMP).

Ubandoma disclosed this at a workshop organized by the RAMP, Federal Project Monitoring Unit (FPMU) and the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, in Abuja. He explained that considering the success of the first two RAMP in Kaduna and Cross River, more states have expressed interest in partaking in the project.

“All the states in the federation are qualified, especially non-RAMP states, including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). We are looking at the possibility of absorbing 10-12 states in this RAMP 3.”, he said.

Anita Fatunji