By Friday Idachaba, Lokoja.
ActionAid Nigeria has urged Kogi State Ministry of Agriculture to engage a consultancy firm or a team of experts who can support Small Women Farmers to access credit facilities.
Manager, Food and Agriculture Programme, ActionAid Nigeria Mr Azubike Nwokoye, disclosed this at a state level of consultative meeting on the 2022/2023 Kogi State Agricultural budget on Thursday in Lokoja.
The meeting was organised by Kogi Budget Committee Group and Small Scale Women Farmers Organisations of Nigeria (SWOFON) in collaboration with thebstte Ministry of Agriculture.
In his presentation on the Role of Stakeholders in ensuring Food Security and Economic Development, Nwokoye said small holder farmers were in dire need of credit facilities in view of the precarious challenges of food production in the country.
He said that the consulting firm would facilitate the farmers’ access to the credit facilities in commercial banks on behalf of the Central Bank.
The ActionAid Food and Agriculture Programme Manager explained that the Central Bank Agricultural credit facilities like the Agricultural Credit Guarantee Scheme Fund among others were domiciled in the commercial banks.
“So, what the consultancy firm should do is to help these small holder women farmers’ cooperatives, youth cooperatives and people living with disabilities cooperatives to develop their business proposals.
“Do their feasibility study, help them do all the needed documentations and negotiate with the commercial banks on the credit interest rate and modus operandi including whether there will be a moratorium or not”, he said.
Nwokoye said the consultants could also support the farmers to access the credit and ensure that other services that can come with the credit like the extension services, insurance and access to market is also accessed along with the credit facilities.
This, according to him, will boost the Internally Generate Revenue (IGR) and promote Kogi State economy with percentage reduction in unemployment and percentage contribution to employment in the state.
Executive Director, Initiative for Grassroots Advancement (INGRA) and member of the Budget Committee Group Mr Hamza Aliyu, urged Kogi State Government to accord its prime position as encapsulated in the New Direction Agenda blueprint.
In his analysis of the 2022 Agriculture sector budget Aliyu quoted the New Direction Agenda as saying that Agriculture was key to the economic emancipation of the state.
Director, Planning, Research and Statistics in the Agriculture Ministry Mr Abraham Ahmed, said there had been consistent effort to increase the Agriculture sector budget adding that there would be improvement in the 2023 budget.
“Though we might not be able to make the 10 per cent Maputo Declaration but we will get close to it”, Ahmed assured.
The state Coordinator of Small Scale Women Farmers Organisations in Nigeria (SWOFON) Hajia Safiya Yahaya, in her remarks said that aside the low budgetary allocations to the Agriculture sector, the main issue had been that of release of the budgeted allocations.
Hajia Safiya therefore implored the State Government to always ensure that budgetary allocations to the sector were also released and right on time to meet the cropping seasons.
In his welcome address, Chairman of Kogi BCG, Mr Mathias Okpanachi, said the meeting was aimed at harnessing capabilities and collaborative efforts of stakeholders towards improvement in sectoral allocations and development of the Agriculture sector.