By Salif Atojoko
President Bola Tinubu has urged state governors to work together to meet the needs of citizens, stating that he is willing to provide the needed support to ensure that Nigerians are relieved of hardship.

The president, who spoke during the National Economic Council (NEC) meeting on Thursday in Abuja, emphasised the urgency of boosting food production in the country.

He said the nation must boost agricultural productivity, strengthen the economy by creating opportunities in the real sectors of agriculture, manufacturing, and construction, as well as provide urgent economic relief for Nigerians.

Tinubu said that the Sokoto-Badagry Highway was a pivotal project as the states within the axis formed the food belt of the nation, and with Badagry being an important artery for food export.

“Our states must work together to deliver on the critical reforms required of us to meet the needs of our people. Time is humanity’s most precious asset. You can never have enough of it. It is getting late.

“We are ready and able to support you in the form of the mechanisation of your agricultural processes and the provision of high-quality seedlings.

“We are prepared to provide solar powered irrigation facilities to support our farmers across seasons, but we must now produce,” he said.

The president added that states must produce enough food for people to eat, and that this would require coordination and intentionality between members of the NEC.

“There is nothing we are doing that is more important than producing high-quality food for our people to consume, buy and sell.

“We create jobs in the production of it. And that is before we generate wealth by exporting the excess. It is not beyond us to achieve this for Nigerians.

“How much support do you need from me and in what form? I am prepared to provide it. But we must achieve the result. We must deliver on our targets at all levels.

“Please report back following your consultations and submit to my office within seven days,”  Tinubu said.

The president approved the immediate rollout of the National Construction and Household Support Programme to cover all geo-political zones in the country.

He said under the programme, the Sokoto-Badagry Highway, which would traverse Sokoto, Kebbi, Niger, Kwara, Oyo, Ogun and Lagos, was prioritised.

Tinubu said other road infrastructure projects such as the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway, which is underway, and the Trans-Saharan Highway, which links Enugu, Abakaliki, Ogoja, Benue, Kogi, Nasarawa, and Abuja, would also be prioritised.

The president also approved full counterpart financing for Port Harcourt-Maiduguri Railway; to traverse Rivers, Abia, Enugu, Benue, Nasarawa, Plateau, Bauchi, Gombe, Yobe and Borno.

He also approved  the Ibadan-Abuja segment of the Lagos-Kano Standard-Gauge Railway; which would traverse Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Kwara, Niger, Abuja, Kaduna, and Kano.

Tinubu said, “The Sokoto-Badagry road project is specially prioritised for its importance as some of the states it will traverse are strategic to the agricultural sustainability of the nation.

“Within the Sokoto-Badagry Highway corridor, there are 216 agricultural communities, 58 large and medium dams spread across six states, seven Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones (SAPZs), 156 local government areas, 39 commercial cities and towns, and over 1 million hectares of arable land.

“In addition, other items under the National Construction and Household Support Programme include one-off allocation to states and the Federal Capital Territory of N10 billion for the procurement of buses and CNG uplift programme.

”Others are: delivery of N50,000 uplift grant each to 100,000 families per state for three months, provision for labour unions and civil society organisations and deployment of N155 billion for the purchase and sale of assorted foodstuffs to be distributed across the nation.”(NAN) (www.nannews.ng)
Edited by Bashir Rabe Mani

By Abigael Joshua

The Global Initiative for Food Security and Ecosystem Preservation (GIFSEP), in partnership with OXFAM, have launched a training programme for women on agriculture and climate change.

Dr Michael David, Executive Director of GIFSEP, announced this at a workshop on Female Food Heroes (Ogbonge), Women on Climate Change, and Access to Climate Finance on Tuesday in Abuja.

David noted the importance of the training, saying that female farmers produce much of the food consumed in the country.

“Climate change is affecting how they grow their food. Given the food inflation the country is experiencing, we can attribute climate change as one of the causes of this issue,” David said.

He stressed the need to train farmers to become change agents in their communities and states, enable them to teach others how to build resilience to climate change and implement simple adaptation techniques.

David also called on the Federal Government to support smallholder farmers with interventions that would ensure bumper harvests.

“To achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2030, we must empower small-scale farmers. We need to train more women, not just the ‘Ogbonge’ women, to help our country attain food sovereignty,” he said.

Similarly, Peggy Maimaji, Project Coordinator of Together Against Poverty at OXFAM, stated that the project addresses issues crucial to female farmers, especially the impacts of climate change on farming.

She assured that the project would continue to address issues of access to land and finance, noting that OXFAM has awarded no fewer than 12 women farmers every year since 2012 through the Female Food Hero project.

Monica Maigari, a participant from Kaduna State who was awarded by OXFAM in 2014 for her achievements, praised the NGOs for the training.

Maigari said she had learned how to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

(NAN) (www.nannews.ng)

Edited by Chijioke Okoronkwo

Experts in organic agriculture have called for more concerted efforts by stakeholders for Nigeria and other West Africa countries to access enormous opportunities in organic agricultural produce and products.

They made the call in Abuja, at a two-day conference with the theme: “Development of a Harmonized Participatory Guarantee System (PGS) standard for West Africa.”

Jude Obi, President of the Association of Organic Agriculture Practitioners of Nigeria, said the West Africa region must access its quotas from the inestimable amount of money available for organic agriculture globally.

Obi said that development of organic agriculture could comfortably address the challenge of food security and increase foreign exchange earnings, stifling the economy in the region.

He expressed concern that the African continent and West Africa were yet to scratch the surface of their own quota in organic agriculture trade.

“Now, the West Africa organic agriculture landscape is evolving, clearly evolving, but the opportunity is massive.

“The amount of money available for organic agriculture in the world is inestimable. And for us in Africa and West Africa, we are not even scratching it.

“So, this is an effort to expand the horizon, make trade easy, make people interested in organic agriculture, increase production which is very important and earn the much needed foreign exchange.

“Which is one of the things that are stifling the economy of West Africa and by extension Africa.

“It is clear that both the African continent and West Africa; they are not scratching the surface. They are not scratching the surface of their own quota in organic agriculture trade,” he said.

Obi said the essence of the conference was to ensure that organic agriculture get rooted in the region to address the challenge of food security and earn more foreign exchange in the region.

“We are gathered here importantly because organic agriculture is gaining traction in West Africa, Africa and the world. And it is not organic if it does not have guidance, if it does not have traceability.

“So, traceability is very important in organic agriculture. We are here to establish protocol for traceability in organic agriculture in West Africa.

“If we are able to achieve this, then there will be easy trade within the sub-region.

“This traceability we are talking about, we call it participatory guarantee scheme. It is the lower level of traceability simply because we have two levels of traceability.

“The first one is a third party. The second one is the participatory guarantee scheme. This participatory guarantee scheme is designed for farmers.

“Third party is expensive and organic agriculture prepares itself to bring in everybody.

“So, participatory guarantee scheme is a process through which a small farmer that doesn’t have a large quantity of money to go through a third party can still establish their traceability, have standard, have certification and be able to trade just like every other person.

`And most importantly, have premium prices because the target is premium price. So, we have gathered here to establish a protocol for a participatory guarantee scheme for the West African region,” he said.

Oyewole Gbadamosi, Coordinator of the Ecological Organic Agriculture Initiative in West Africa, in his submission said that organic agriculture would enhance global trade, promotion of exports, and exportation of material among others in the region.

According to him, the conference was planned to facilitate the development of a regional standard for organic agriculture in the West African states.

“It is aimed to create a short supply chain for product movements across the member states and we are gathered here to do exactly that,” he said.

He said that the conference would among others address the issue of verification in terms of the quality of things that are produced organically.

“We have had many products labeled organic and which are not. I have also had different regulations which have not been followed particularly in some West African states, where we do have regulations on organic agriculture.

“So this particular workshop is to provide the working documents for certification and reference label for organic products and to serve as a value addition for the organic product and to increase the credibility of the products while moving across the region.

“We are expecting that this can be a giant stride for the development of organic agriculture in the region, while working hard to see that we are able to even leverage on some of the other important things that this particular initiative brings.”

Dr. Kofi Emanuel, Programme Officer of Rural Development and Land Government at the ECOWAS Commission, Department of Economic Affairs and Agriculture, said development of organic agriculture would address the challenge of food security in the region.

Emmanuel, who is also the Chairman of the Ecological Organic Agriculture Initiative, Secretariat in West Africa, stressed the need for harmonisation of standards across member states.

“I cannot say that there is no standard. There are standards in the member states. People are producing organic products but for free trade across our member states.

“We need to harmonize these standards. That is why we are doing this now. We are working.

“You know, our agriculture, if you compare our practice to other countries as in other continents, we can say that we are seeing the area of Ecological Organic Agriculture because we use less of our fertilizers.

“The chemical fertilizers are very less. We are about 18 to 24 kilograms per hectare. Even compared to those of Asia who are 300 kilograms, more than 320 kilograms per hectare.

“Our agriculture is still ecological and organic. It feeds its population. So we need to have the label, we need the standard for it,” he said.

He equally harped on the need for access to technology, sharing of information, research and develop capacity of our farmers for the development of the sector.

“So, the capacity building issue is very important for our farmers and our organization. We need certification. It’s very important.

“If you go to the market, your products are not certified. If you didn’t have a label on your products, it cannot make visibility of that. So it’s very important to do all these processes,” he said.

He agreed that organic agriculture might not be able to feed the entire population in the region but can contribute significantly in feeding them.

“Organic agriculture can contribute to feed this population; can contribute to produce and taking into account our soil health.

“But we cannot feed all our population through only organic agriculture. We need to manage, taking into account the necessity to preserve the fertility of our soil and to tackle all the challenges we have to face,” he said.

By Talatu Maiwada

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has commenced the distribution of farm inputs to 187,250 farmers in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states.

Mr Dominique Kouacou, FAO’s Nigeria/ECOWAS Representative, said at the event on Thursday at Jabbi-Lamba, Girei Local Government Area, Adamawa, that the intervention followed the seeming escalation of food insecurity in the country.

Represented by Mr Luc Manga, Head of Office, North-East, Kouacou, said that a large population of people in the North-East were at the risk of facing food insecurity.

Kouacou said that the intervention, supported by the European Union Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO), USAID, Norway’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, and Swiss Development and Cooperation was targeted at benefiting about 26,750 households.

“In all, the intervention will benefit no fewer than 187,250 individuals across the the three states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe,” he said.

The FAO representative, said that a total of 5,350 households and 37,450 individuals would benefit from the programme in Guyuk, Madagali, Michika and Girei areas of Adamawa.

“They will receive essential inputs such as cereal seeds, legume seeds, vegetable seeds and NPK fertilisers.

“This collaborative effort is geared towards restoring and strengthening food security in the state.

“It is also aimed at supporting the communities to restart their individual means of livelihood, improve food production and foster economic resilience,” he said.

Earlier, Gov. Ahmadu Fintiri, said that the collaboration was a significant milestone in the effort to transform agriculture in the state and the North-East region at large

Represented by Prof. David Jatau, the Commissioner for Agriculture, Fintiri commended FAO for the support, describing it as timely and impactful.

“Agriculture is not just a sector, it is a way of life. Your support has been instrumental in building resilience in our agriculture sector and ensuring food security.

“From these initiatives, the farmers will receive high quality seeds, fertiliser and other inputs that will help to produce high yielding crops,” he said.

The governor said that the state government was already providing training supports to farmers to improve their skills and competence.

“Our intention is to develop sustainable agricultural practices that will ensure long-term food security for our people,” he said.

Halilu Bello, a beneficiary, appreciated FAO and the state government for the initiative, saying that the inputs would help the farmers to eliminate hunger and rebuild their sources of livelihood.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that FAO is a specialised agency of the United Nations that is leading international efforts to eliminate hunger. (NAN)(www.nannews.ng)

Edited by Florence Onuegbu and Azubuike Okeh

By Felicia Imohimi

The Smallholder Women Farmers Organisation of Nigeria (SWOFON) has urged the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) administration to declare a state of emergency on insecurity to ensure the safety of farmers.

Mrs Olabisi Ogedengbe, SWOFON Coordinator for Gwagwalada, FCT, made this call at a news conference organised by SWOFON on Wednesday in Abuja.

The conference was titled “Emerging Challenges Affecting Smallholder Women Farmers in the FCT.”

According to Ogedengbe, such a declaration would address the looming food crisis and inflation in the territory.

She noted the alarming insecurity and farmer-herder clashes in the FCT, which have made smallholder women farmers vulnerable, hindering their access to farmlands and causing them significant losses.

She identified the security challenges as a major contributing factor to the current hike in food costs.

Ogedengbe warned that the livelihood conditions of most smallholder women farmers were deteriorating, making it increasingly difficult for them to provide food, access healthcare, infrastructure, and afford their children’s education.

“The conference aims to draw the attention of the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) and the Nigerian Government to the impact of the challenges affecting smallholder women farmers in the FCT.

“In light of the escalating economic challenges and concurrent food crises and inflation, SWOFON deemed it imperative to highlight the severe effects on smallholder women farmers in the territory.”

Ogedengbe cited recent data from the National Bureau of Statistics, indicating that the food inflation rate in January 2024 was 35.41 per cent on a year-on-year basis.

“The figure is 11.10 percentage points higher compared to the rate of 24.32 per cent recorded last January. Similarly, Cable News reported in May 2024 that the FCT experienced a food inflation rate of 38.38 per cent.”

“The rise in food inflation on a year-on-year basis began with the COVID-19 pandemic and was exacerbated by increases in the prices of bread and cereals, potatoes, yams and other tubers, oil and fat, among others,” she said.

She called on FCT Minister Nyesom Wike and the FCTA to invest massively in agriculture to ensure food and nutrition security.

Mrs Comfort Sunday, SWOFON Coordinator for the FCT Chapter, identified other challenges faced by the women, such as barriers to land ownership and control.

She noted that farmlands were often taken over by the government for commercial purposes, limiting women farmers’ ability to invest in and benefit from agricultural activities.

She criticised the disparities in access to and release of quality seeds, fertilisers, water pumps, solar boreholes, sprayers, and other inputs between male and female farmers.

According to her, these disparities make it difficult for women farmers to engage in dry season farming, leading to low agricultural production and food insecurity.

Sunday said women farmers were disproportionately affected by climate change impacts such as erratic rainfall, droughts, and soil degradation, which threaten food security and livelihoods.

She noted that farmers lacked resources to implement adaptive measures to these environmental challenges.

The coordinator called for reforms to land tenure policies to ensure equitable access to land for women, including legal support and advocacy for land rights.

“There should be a timely release of farm inputs to smallholder women farmers by all tiers of government for this rainy season farming.

“The Federal Government and FCTA should urgently provide subsidies and support to our farmers for easy access to inputs such as quality early maturing seeds, seedlings, feeds, organic fertilisers, and pesticides.

“This will help increase food production, improve farmers’ livelihoods, and stimulate economic growth in the agricultural sector.”

Edited by Chijioke Okoronkwo