6 States To Benefit From World Bank $500m RAMP

The national coordinator, Rural Access Mobility Project (RAMP), Engr Ularamu Ubandoma, has said that about six states in the country will benefit from the new $500 million loan facility from the World Bank for rural road construction.
Ubandoma disclosed this at a workshop organised by the RAMP, Federal Project Monitoring Unit, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, in Abuja, recently.
According to the engineer, “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 per cent counterpart funding while the federal government is to make a 95 per cent refund.
“This RAMP project is something that will transform the lives of rural people. All the states in the federation are qualified, especially non-RAMP states, including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). But we are looking at the possibility of absorbing 10-12 states in this RAMP 3. The essence of this workshop is to discuss selection criteria for participation so that each state can go back and make final submission to the FPMU which will analyse it and submit to the World Bank.”
He explained that considering the success recorded in RAMP 1 and 2 projects in Kaduna and Cross River states respectively, more states have indicated interest to partake in the project. He added that about 1,000 kilometres of rural roads and 143 river crossings were constructed in RAMP 1 while 2,000 kilometres of rural roads are targeted for RAMP 2 with 80 river crossings.
Earlier, the minister of state for agriculture, Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, described the initiative as vital to achieving the federal government food sufficiency plan.