With the havoc caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent shutdown that left the world at a standstill, GRACE OBIKE, with support from the International Budget Partnership (IBP), had a chat with smallholder women farmers in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) on how the situation affected them.

IMAGINE a farmer braving the lockdown that commenced in March, trekking back and forth to her farm for lack of transportation, labouring for weeks to cultivate her farmland, which is her only means of livelihood and finally planting maize.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3GE4JkRE9E

She tends it like a baby since she cannot purchase the much-needed fertiliser that this type of crop thrives on, then watches it grow to waist length as the weeks go by only to return on a fateful day to discover that all she had planted had been eaten up by herds of cattle.

The above scenario is the plight of many small-scale farmers in different parts of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

Recalling her sad story, Asibi Gade, a small-scale woman farmer who resides in Small Shada, opposite the Mathematical Centre in Kwali Area Council, rents farmlands for N10, 000 per season on which to grow cassava which she will process into fufu in large quantity for sale, corn and rice.

The widow and mother of two who resides in a tiny two-bedroom bungalow with her unemployed graduate son explained to The Nation how last year, she and a group of women contributed resources and rented hectares of land for N10, 000 per hectare, cultivated corn and soybeans with the aim of sharing the profit. But when some of them went to harvest the produce, they found cattle on the farm having a field day.

“The herdsmen surrounded our women, uprooted the produce and fed them to their cattle. We lost everything. We arrested the herdsmen and took them to the police, but they advised us to accept the N20, 000 compensation they offered us if we don’t want to lose everything,” she said.

In Jiwa community of the Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC), the experience of the farmers is similar.

Comfort Sunday just began a fish farm about two weeks ago to supplement her income from crops. She is just one of the hundreds of women in the community that farm in a large expanse of land divided into small plots without any form of demarcation among over 500 women who cultivate various vegetables such as waterleaf, garden-eggs and other crops. She plants rice, beans, corn and groundnut.

Last year, her group, the Smallholder Women Farmers’ of Nigeria (SWOFON) applied to the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA) for fertiliser, which they eventually got at a subsidised rate. She used the fertiliser on her beans crop and applied sufficient herbicides to ensure a good yield. Her bean crops were almost ready for harvest when herdsmen came to her farm and she lost everything as they cattle destroyed everything.

When she spoke with our reporter at her farm, she said during the lockdown, a couple in the community was returning from the farm when they came across herdsmen feeding their cattle with a neighbour’s crop. They confronted the herdsmen who attacked them with sticks and cutlasses and were eventually rescued by youths who got wind of the incident.

Why smallholder women farmers

According to a research conducted by Bashir Babura and published in the Scholarly Journal of Agricultural Science, Vol. 7 (1) in 2017, more than 80 per cent of farmers in Nigeria are smallholder farmers who produce an estimated 98 per cent of the food consumed in Nigeria apart from wheat. Many of the farmers are women. In the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) alone, the Programme Coordinator SWOFON, Ogechi Okebugwu said at least 13,000 small-scale farmers are women.

Their farming is, however, constantly disrupted by incidents of clashes with herders in search of food for their cattle. To stem these incidents, the Federal Government attempted to introduce the Rural Grazing Area (RUGA) policy, which was developed by the National Livestock Transformation Plan under the Nigerian Economic Council, but the move was faulted and has been adopted only by some states.

In pursuit of its diversification toward agriculture, the Federal Government’s budgetary allocations have continued to increase from 1.25 per cent in 2016 to 1.82 per cent in 2017 and 2.23 per cent in 2018.

Apart from launch of the programmes such as the N150 billion credit relief package by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for agriculture food chain businesses, FarmerMoni loans which have a three-month repayment period and the presidential fertiliser initiative for the 2020 farming season, the Federal Government recently announced that it intends to secure 995million Euro-worth of agricultural equipment for Nigerian farmers.

The FCT Authority also has the Agriculture Development Project (ADP), which delivers to women extension services towards ensuring that they are coordinated to key into agriculture development programmes.

READ MORE: https://www.icirnigeria.org/fct-women-farmers-worry-about-insecurity-resources/

like for herdsmen share for farmers

supercase1:

like for herdsmen share for farmers

Pls you shouldn't be doing this on a sensitive topic like this , remember this women lost their sweat to herders it very sad

noeloge82:

Pls you shouldn't be doing this on a sensitive topic like this , remember this women lost their sweat to herders it very sad

that guy is tired and fed up with Nigeria and her leadership

It's obvious you don't really understand what this means , if you do, you won't type this all for like or share. My parent introduced me to farming of recent, I know what it means, and will never joke with incidence like this. Let's HV human feelings biko

supercase1:

like for herdsmen share for farmers