The Federal Ministry of
Agriculture and Rural Development says the registration of farmers in the southern states of the country will commence by the first week of March.
The Permanent Secretary in the ministry, Mrs Ibukun Odusote, announced this recently in Enugu during a stakeholders meeting on the Growth Enhancement Support Scheme (GES) for the Southern States.
The GES is the flagship programme of the Agricultural Transformation Agenda under which registered farmers receive fertiliser and seeds through an electronic system known as the e-wallet.
The farmer pays half the price of the input while the state and federal governments pay the balance.
Odusote, represented by the South East Coordinator of the scheme, Dr Uche Nwafor, said the exercise was aimed at accommodating farmers who did not participate in the previous registration in the country.
According to her, the meeting was organised to sensitise farmers on the GES and inform them of the roll-out date in order to increase the number of benefitting farmers.
She said that the ministry would partner with the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) to capture the biometrics of farmers and bring them into the country’s financial system.
The permanent secretary said that the ministry registered 10.5 million farmers nationwide in 2013.
Odusote said that 5.28 million farmers received subsidised inputs under the generic GES while 272,798 farmers accessed inputs under the Specialised Value Chains.
According to her, the figure did not include farmers who benefitted under the aquaculture and livestock sub-sectors which came into the scheme in the 2013 season.
“This system has worked successfully in the last two years. It is on record that for the first time ever in Nigeria, we can actually tell you which farmer received which input, when they did, how much they paid and how much government paid,’’ she said.
In his remarks, Mr Mike Eneh, the Enugu State Commissioner for Agriculture who doubled as the Chairman of the occasion, said the state government was restructuring itsagriculture policy to be in line with that of the Federal government and donor- funded projects.
Eneh said that the state would harness its abundant natural resources to grow the agriculture sector through an efficient, competitive, sustainable, and export-led sector.
The commissioner said that this measure would ensure growth, food security, increased income and generate employment for the youths.
“This is why we are here to support this programme and eliminate traces of corruption in the system as we witnessed with the previous fertiliser distribution and procurement programmes.’’
He noted that the programme was good but identified challenges hindering effective implementation to mixtures of names of farmers, omissions, wrong spellings, late arrival of inputs, distant location of redemption centres and climate change.
He challenged the participants to device strategies to mitigate the challenges.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports commissioners for agriculture from Edo, Delta, Imo and Ebonyi as well as farmers association, bankers and other stakeholders in the agriculture sector attended the meeting.