FG Registers 2.5m Farmers Nationwide

The Federal Government says it has so far registered more than 2.5 million farmers under its farmers’ census exercise nationwide. The Director, Federal Department of Rural Development, Mr Daniel Da-oud, disclosed this in Abuja on Monday.

Daoud said that the data had been captured in the ongoing nationwide farmers registration exercise. He reiterated Federal Government’s readiness to provide the farmers with adequate farm inputs to support them and boost agricultural production.

He said no fewer than eight million forms were distributed to all the states of the federation and FCT for the registration exercise. The director explained that the target was to register five million farmers yearly, so that by 2015, at least 20 million of them would have been registered.

Daoud gave assurance that the exercise would ensure that all the small scale farmers captured received adequate support.

The farmers are expected to be registered through the Electronic Wallet (e-Wallet) Growth Enhancement Programme under the Agricultural Transformation Agenda policy.

The E-Wallet system is a scheme where the farmer gets a telephone alert on the quantity of fertilizers and other inputs allocated to him or her with the access pin number at a designated agro-dealer centre.

Daoud said the system had been tested in some pilot states to know the challenges and that government was working towards perfecting the programme owing to the lapses that were identified during the test run.