The Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security has revealed plans to delist unverified farmers who pose as portfolio investors and clean up the farmers’ register, in order to work directly with verified farmers only.
The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Abubakar Kyari, stated this when Katsina State Governor, Dikko Umar Radda, visited him in his office in Abuja.
He said with the support from state governments the Federal Government will achieve the objective.
“In addition to achieving what Mr President has said in his new year address is to provide 500 hectares of arable land for this year.
“We are committed and we are assuring our citizens that we are also going to exceed Mr President’s target.
“First thing first, we have to collaborate with the states and local governments to come up with a genuine and verifiable farmer list.
“This is very important because we have to know who the real farmers are. And by so doing we have to collaborate with the local authorities and the state so that they can buy into our programmes and also succeed what we set out to do.
“In addition, we are going to set up from our side and the side of the states a taskforce team to make sure that this programme is successful like the land tripping issue, veritable data and the inability of farmers to come up with their own portion because of the precarious economic situation that we have found ourselves in”, Kyari said.
On his part, Governor Radda, who supported the initiative, promised to separate politicians parading as farmers from the real farmers and empower them adequately.
“Without data you cannot pinpoint who is a farmer and who is not a farmer. Unfortunately, we are politicians and in most states, we have politicised the distribution of inputs and distribution of other materials to farmers, but to politicians who are not into agricultural production.
“In Katsina State, we have been able to separate the two. Politics be on the other side, real farmers be on the other side.
“We want to have a way of helping the politicians without necessarily taking what he does not deserve and without necessarily taking what he will not utilise adequately and will end up selling it in the market without much impact on the economy.
“So, right now I am discussing with the consultants developing a data bank for us in the state for our farmers. With that it would help the distribution of inputs and reaching out to farmers on any kind of intervention that they need.
“Recently, we visited the African Development Bank. I led to the team and I felt that we need to give a regional approach to development because if we are doing it in a piecemeal it would not give us the added value that we need”, Governor Radda added.
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