Urge govt to work directly with real farmers

Nigeria Women for Agriculture Progress has said that most verified women farmers are yet to receive the N15 trillion intervention in the agricultural sector that was promised since 1999.

The farmers claimed few women, who received them were portfolio farmers with no farmland.

National Coordinator of the group, Omolara Swenson, while speaking at the Women in Agriculture and Agribusiness Convention, yesterday, in Abuja lamented that many women farmers collected loans to buy farm inputs and most of them were unable to pay them back.

She said: “From 1999 till date, the Federal Government has spent over N15 trillion intervention on the agricultural sector, but unfortunately many known farmers have not been able to benefit from it.”

She urged the government to look into why many interventions given to their male counterparts have not yielded much, saying government interventions kept increasing every year, but food production kept declining.

“To our President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and the First Lady, Oluremi Tinubu, ministers of agriculture and women affairs, we want them to look at agriculture. We don’t need to say women are the custodians of agriculture, we want the President to ask one question: all this while they have been given intervention to men, why is it that our food output is reducing year by year but the money they are giving is increasing every year.”

She blamed the situation on the lack of unity among women farmers, saying they belonged to different farmers’ associations and the government had been using divide-and-rule tactics in dealing with them.

She stressed the need for women farmers to unite, saying: “We all must come together and speak with one voice, I’m proud of women because when we put our mind to do something, we do it better than men. If we decide to come together with one voice, we can achieve it.

“We are using this medium to plead with the President to work directly with women farmers, it can be done, the government can work directly with us without going through intermediaries, the Nigerian economy can be revived through agriculture,” she stressed.

Coordinator of South West region, Mrs Enitan Ontiri, in her remarks, also lamented the frustrations faced by women farmers in the region, saying they were working towards adopting sustainable programmes for common progress among women farmers. (The Guardian)

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