At least, 10, 000 farm families in Edo cannot access the N350 million donor fund, according to the Edo North Coordinator, state chapter of All Farmers
Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Alhaji Mohammed Oshiobugie.
Oshiobugie, who disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Benin, attributed the development to non payment of N94 million counterpart fund for Fadama III and Rural Finance Institution Project (RUFIN) by the state government.
He said that while other states of the federation enjoyed the benefits of FADAMA III additional financing, same could not be said of farmers in Edo.
The AFAN coordinator said similar thing applied to that of RUFIN where the government had also failed to pay the annual N12million counter fund for the same number of years.
“The challenge this poses to farmers now is that, they have been denied access to fund to the tune of about N350 million.
‘’The effect of this is that, no fewer than 10, 000 farm families have been left on their own.
“I begin to wonder if this is the state government’s plan for farmers in the state; its plan to create 200, 000 jobs within the next four years,” he said.
According to him, majority of those being planned for employment are from the agriculture sector.
Oshiobugie said farmers did not understand the policy direction of the present government in the state, as it concerned agriculture.
He urged the state government to involve farmers in the formulation and implementation of policies on agriculture to yield the desire result and give the farmers a sense of purpose.
Oshiobugie attributed failure of most agricultural policies in the state to non involvement of farmers who were the major stakeholders in the policy formulation and implementation.
He said to get it right, government must adopt the current trend of agricultural implementation which is the Community Demand Driven (CDD) approach, same as the Bottom Top approach.
“This enables the farmers to be at the driver’s seat of agricultural programmes and project implementation in the state.
“This system ensures the quality implementation and success of any proposed agricultural policy by the State government.
He decried that the state government was yet to inaugurate this year farming season with a view to making fertiliser available to farmers.
“As I speak with you, no farmer can boast of any grain of fertiliser in Edo and the government has kept us in the dark as to when and where the fertiliser will be available.”
“It is really regrettable that like the previous administration, agricultural policies seem to be announced on the pages of newspapers and television and nothing to show on ground.
On the Anchor Borrower Scheme, the coordinator said that several months after farmers had been made to register and open an account with the Bank of Agriculture, the state government had remained inactive.
He expressed worry that the state government remained silent over the scheme that had been well embraced in other states.
Meanwhile, the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Mr Bashir Kadir, has denied the allegations.
Kadir, in a telephone interview with NAN in Benin on Thursday, said the present administration in the state did not deliberately refuse to pay its the counter part fund for the agricultural programmes but taking its time to get things right.
He said the state government was reviewing the programmes to see if they were beneficial to the people, adding that if not, to it would see what could be down to change the narrative.
“These are old programmes that have been running for years now; we also have a new programme, called the Agricpreneur, where we are trying to produce many millionaires for the sector.
“We are reviewing the Fadama and RUFIN programmes along with the new one we have developed.
‘’It is not a close door situation, if the benefit from these programmes that have been running is okay by the state government, we will continue with them,” he said.
As for the Achor Borrower Scheme, Kadiri said government was trying to satisfy all the conditions set out by Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) before venturing into it.
“We are presently carrying out integrity test on the data before us. We want to ensure that apart from recouping loan, we are also dealing with the real farmers.”
He said a total of 35, 000 farmers had been captured for the scheme, with about N5 billion facility being the target for the scheme.
Kadiri also said that the ministry had been working closely with all stake holders in agricultural sector of the state, including AFAN as regards policy direction and implementation of the state government.
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