The Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations says it has so far supported 141,000 households of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) with agricultural inputs for the rainy season farming in Northeastern Nigeria.

The Acting Country representative, Mr Nourou Macki-Tall, who disclosed this while flagging off the presentation of agricultural inputs to 1,500 IDPs at Shagari low-cost area in Maiduguri on Friday, said that the exercise was conducted in partnership with World Food Programme, Social Welfare Network Initiative and the Borno State Ministry of Agriculture. He stated that 67,000 farmers were drawn from Borno State, 41,000 from Yobe State and 32,000 beneficiaries from Adamawa State.

He explained that the FAO had so far made available about $17.5 million, which would be channeled into various agricultural programmes to target 1.1 million farming populations in the Northeast.

“We are targeting farming communities who lost their means of livelihood in Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa States. Farming was the basic means of livelihood for most of them and they have not been able to farm for quite some time," Mr Macki-Tall lamented.

“In March 2017, FAO and Federal Ministry of Agriculture conducted the cadre harmonise vulnerability analysis that estimated around 5.2 million people will face high levels of food insecurity in the Northeast.

“With the recovery of hitherto vacated lands and restoration of relative peace in some liberated communities, the need for the people to get back their lives together cannot be over emphasised.

“Lack of agricultural inputs is the major constraints for many farmers particularly the IDPs.”.

The 1,500 beneficiaries drawn from Maiduguri Metropolitan Council and Jere received fertilisers and varieties of seeds including cowpea, cereal, millet, sorghum and maize.

(Channels TV)

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