By Noah Ocheni, Lokoja
The Food and Agriculture Programmes Coordinator for ActionAid Nigeria, Azubike Nwokoye has rated Kogi, Bauchi, Ebonyi, Delta, Kwara and the Federal Capital Territory low in its recent assessments of agricultural extension service performance.
The Coordinator who presented outcome of his findings to farmers in Abuja, according to ‘Kogi Report’, lamented that poor funding and lack of sufficient training of extension workers were some of the factors militating against food surplus in the country.
Nwokoye who also gave fair pass marks to Gombe and Ondo States
further identified lack of mobility and transport allowance to enable extension workers move around as snags affecting the sector.
The Programmes Officer called on the federal, states and local governments, to pay more attention to extension service providers so as to scale up food sufficiency and increase the country’s earnings.
He added: “The essence of this gathering is actually to show the latest data we have on the level of access extension services in Nigeria. And the challenges of poor funding of the extension services and the components of agriculture for us to push for increased funding.”
He called on relevant authorities to incorporate women farmers into extension service providers adding that extension services is the fulcrum of agricultural productivity. “Over the years, farmer agent ratio has been very poor; there is a wide gap and some of the statistics are showing that in Nigeria you have one extension agent to 2,500 family farms.”
“In some situations, one extension agent to ten thousand farms. Latest, people that have done it are saying ten thousand extension agents to eighteen thousand family farms.”
“So, the gap is wide. There is also in existence the challenge of low recruitment, lack of mobility and transport allowance and lack of training and low number of female extension agents across Nigeria.”
“The aim of this conversation is to make sure the poor funding situation is addressed within this budgetary process that is currently ongoing in the 2022 agriculture budget.” he added.
“We believe that it is a waste of our common wealth if government, both at the federal and state levels have extension agents that they cannot provide them with motorcycles and transport allowance to do their job.”
“It means that when they pay them at the end of the month without providing them money for operation, government is wasting our common wealth.”
“It is better for government not to waste our common wealth by ensuring that trainings and retraining are provided for extension agents and that they are provided with proper mobility to be able to deliver this services to the farmers.”
“Across Nigeria, we have a lot of technological research that are lying on the shelves. Because of the low funding of extension services, these technologies are not distributed to farmers.”
