By Muhammad Maitela, Damaturu
In a proactive move to address food security, combat inflation and respond to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s emergency declaration on food security, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security has launched the 2023/2024 dry season wheat farming under the National Agricultural Growth Scheme and Agro Pocket (NAGS-AP) project.
The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security Senator Abubakar Kyari, said the project has a 50% input subsidy to cultivate between 200,000 to 250,000 hectares and an expected yield of 1250,000 tonnes of wheat across the country.
The inputs have been delivered in Yobe State, where each selected farmer will receive 7 bags of NPK fertilizer, 2 bags of wheat seed 50kg, 7L of liquid fertilizer and pesticide depending on the size of hectares the price of the inputs is N360,000 but government has slashed the price to N180,500 by 50% percent subsidy for the beneficiaries.
Peoples Daily learned that issues have surrounded the project from diverting the commodity by non-farmers to the black marketers where a kit of farm inputs was sold at a subsidized price.
While in interview with our reporter, Alhaji Isa Mai Unguwa, a rice and wheat farmer in Gashua, the headquarters of Bade LGA of Yobe State said he used to harvest over 3,000 bags of rice annually but he has never benefited from the government intervention from the state or federal government.
Mai Unguwa also alleged that farm inputs such as fertilizers, seeds, and chemicals among others, collected on their behalf were not distributed to them accordingly.
‘‘I used to harvest 3,000 bags of paddy rice annually, but what I wanted to tell you is that, all my farm inputs from fertilizer to chemicals among others I used to buy them with my earnings without government intervention.
‘‘I tried my best to get this intervention called NAGS-AP Project for wheat farmers but I couldn’t make it, because in the first place I didn’t even know later on I got information about the programmes I tried my best but I didn’t know who the leaders of distribution are.
‘‘I have a boss his name is Alhaji Jabbi, he is a well-known farmer in our area, any time when there is government intervention government officials handle some inputs to him so that the support will reach the real farmers but this time around he was not been consulted.
‘‘Therefore if the government is serious about farming and improving the food security in the country, it should go and look for the leaders of the real farmers to give them support or this support should go directly to the real farmers who will pay back.’’ He said.
Another farmer, Alhaji Abdulmumini Garba, lamented that the aim of the emergency declaration on food security in the country by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the 2023/2024 dry season wheat farming under the National Agricultural Growth Scheme and Agro Pocket (NAGS-AP) project to support 250,000 farmers have been defeated in Yobe, as the targeted farmers have not been selected.
‘‘The officials who are vested with the responsibility of ensuring effective and transparent distribution of the commodities to real farmers, have hijacked the benefits.
“They either resell or give them to their close allies who in turn sell to the farmers at high rates”.
Our Reporter, who spoke with the chairman of Farmers Association of Yobe State, lamented that even when the government created intervention programmes to support local farmers, the grants or loans did not get to the real farmers in the local communities.
The Secretary of the Association, Mallam Auwal Hassan Gashu’a said the distributors of the inputs had not contacted the leadership of the association during the distribution of the farm inputs saying diversion, and irregularities were happening in the exercise.
