Politicians, Bane Of Growth Enhancement Scheme?

The reforms in the nation’s agricultural sector began with the implementation of the Growth Enhancement Support (GES) scheme, a federal government intervention scheme in which farmers access subsidised seeds and fertilisers through their mobile phones. Ruth Tene Natsa writes on the possibility that politicians, among several others, are working to compromise the success of the programme.

A major achievement of the immediate past government has been its renowned success in the nation’s agriculture sector through the Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA).
The ATA, launched in 2012, is an initiative of the Federal Ministry of Agricultural and Rural Development to support the former President Goodluck Jonathan’s Transformation Agenda.

It further birthed the Growth Enhancement Support (GES) scheme to provide farmers with subsidised seeds and fertilisers using their GSM phones also known as the E-wallet.

According to the former minister of agriculture and rural development, Dr Akinwumi Adesina, the GES is aimed at tackling the massive corruption practised in the system for over 40 years where less than 11 per cent small holder farmers had access to subsidised seeds and fertilisers procured and distributed by government. While stakeholders have commended the efforts of the government in ensuring that farmers get access to the government subsidised seeds and fertilisers at 50 per cent subsidy – whereby both the federal and state governments pay 25 per cent – it has come to light that staff of the various ministries and politicians are compromising the efforts by interfering in the process.

Also while the scheme has been largely termed a success, it has been severely challenged by late delivery of inputs, poor network in rural areas, omission of names from beneficiary lists and in recent times it is being threatened by politicians, civil servants and business men whose only interests is profit. In an exclusive interview with LEADERSHIP, a farmer, Mrs Mary Audu, lamented that after registering for the process in Kachia local government area of Kaduna State, she had only been able to access the scheme on two occasions as she never gets the alert anymore.

“When the scheme started, I was getting alert and was even able to access some subsidised seeds and fertilisers in 2012. But after that I did not get again. When I learnt that people were collecting, I went back to the centre were I had registered but was unable to get. Interestingly, they found my name on the list but I didn’t get the text message and could not access the fertilisers.What is annoying is that people I know who are not farmers are able to get their inputs even though they are not registered; they are connected and have people who put their names on the list. They buy at the subsidise rates and sell to us at higher rates while we the farmers can barely get those inputs.”

Also speaking with LEADERSHIP, the chief executive officer, Interproducts Link Limited, and national chairman, Agro Dealers, Alhaji Shuaibu Bello, revealed that over five million farmers had benefitted from the scheme in 2014 alone. Rating the scheme a success and giving it a pass mark, he observed that “while government had done all it could to ensure the success of the scheme, it was still challenged by late delivery and some manipulative politicians who send in dealers without proper screening.

“Even though I give the GES a pass mark, there are lapses, especially where alerts are concerned. Also some people want to take the work backwards because some of the dealers were allowed in without proper screening. Now politicians have started planting their own people who want to come in and do things their own way because they feel they have been put there by these politicians trying to compromise the GES and there is little or nothing we can do about it.”