Only 500,000 farmers have insurance cover in Nigeria, Mr. Paul Eluhaiwe, the director, Development Finance Department, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), has said. He disclosed this recently in Abuja during a workshop on “Climate Change Based Insurance in Nigeria”.

Noting that the Nigeria Agricultural Insurance Corporation (NAIC) is the sole provider of agricultural insurance in Nigeria, the director called for the review of the Act establishing the corporation, to allow the participation of private sector insurance companies in agricultural insurance. “This will improve efficiency and spur healthy competition in the sector,” Eluhaiwe said.

In his remarks at the occasion, Mr. Ewah Eleri, the executive director, International Centre for Energy, Environment & Development (ICEED), noted that less than one per cent of Nigerian farmers had access to agricultural insurance.

Eleri also said that climate change presented an “unprecedented” challenge to the growth and development of agriculture in Nigeria.

He noted that the destruction of several farmlands by floods last year resulted to food scarcity with the resultant increase in the cost of agricultural produce.

Eleri warned that the expected flooding in the country this year would exacerbate the plight of farmers, adding that if the trend continued, the country’s efforts to meet the MDGs might be jeopardised.

He noted that the nation’s agricultural sector was vulnerable to climate variability since over 90 per cent of crop production in the country was dependent on rain-fed agriculture.

He said that access to insurance would expand the lending sector and guard against increasing uncertainties arising from climate change.

According to him, discussion was ongoing at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change talks with a view to negotiating climate-based insurance mechanism to address the threat posed by climate change to agriculture and other sectors.

He also expressed support for CBN’s efforts to expand credit to the agricultural sector, saying that it would help build farmers’ resilience against climatic disasters.

Earlier in her remarks, Mrs. Mariam Ibrahim, a representative of the All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), stressed the need to provide insurance cover for Nigerian farmers.

She said that climate change posed a serious threat to farmers as more than 90 per cent of them depended on rainfall to grow their crops.