Stakeholders in agriculture have brainstormed ways of ensuring agricultural development and food sufficiency in Kwara State.
The stakeholders forum was facilitated by the Centre for Community Empowerment and Poverty Eradication (CCEPE) and funded by Actionaid Nigeria.
The purpose of the gathering was to holistically brainstorm on ways to ensure food sufficiency.
The forum had in attendance members of the Small-Scale Women Farmers Organisation in Nigeria (SWOFON), Agricultural Budget Committee of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) on Public Financing of Agriculture (PFA) and officials of the relevant government agencies.
In his opening remark, Mr Abdulkareem Sulaiman, the Chief Executive Officer of CCEPE chastised the state for failing in the provision of a budget line for women farmers in the state.
This, he said is not good for agricultural development as smallholder women farmers constitute the chunk of labour in the sector.
Sulaiman also wondered why the state was yet to key into the Rural Access and Agricultural Marketing Project (RAAMP) of the World Bank.
According to him, many states in the country have benefited from the scheme and Kwara, which has lacked protracted infrastructure challenge in the rural areas shouldn’t be left out.
In his contribution, PFA project coordinator Mr Abdulrahman Ayuba said that the forum became necessary particularly at this time that the state was having a new government so as to set a new agenda.
Ayuba said that the state had not really done well in meeting the required budgetary provision for the agriculture sector as contained in the Maputo declaration.
He identified series of loopholes in the budget preparation of the state, saying the document was not often explicit like the federal budget and that of some other states.
He said that women farmers are not being provided for in the budget and where they are provided for, it is not always cash-backed.
SWOFON Coordinator in the state, Hajia Bosede Anifowose lamented that lip service was paid to farming in the state, particularly the plight of women farmers.
Anifowose advocated for inclusive budgeting where women farmers would be involved in budget processing.
In their responses, the government representatives pledged to submit the report of the forum to the appropriate quarters.
Representative of the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development Matthew Ajayi blamed the inability of the state government to pay counterpart fund for failure of the RAAMP to commence in the state.
He, however, noted that in recent time, women in agriculture had begun to have budget line, noting that paucity of fund might be responsible for the inability to access the budget.
His Works and Transport counterpart, Garuba Halidu said that arrangement had been concluded on survey of rural roads to be captured under the RAAMP.
According to him, the World hired a consultant, who identified the viable communities that need motorable for economic development.
He urged any community that has infrastructural challenges to always write the ministry for proper attention.
He advised them never to assume that government was aware of everything, explaining that writing government would ensure budgetary provision was subsequently made for it.
In her remark, Mrs Habeebat Hussein of Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources said that most of the proposals to assist farmers were always approved at the ministry, but suffered cash-backing after budget passage.