Meeting cross session |
A
non-governmental organisation, Action Aid of Nigeria has lamented the absence
of extension agents in the agricultural sector in the country. This was
disclosed during the dissemination of assessment of government expenditure on
agriculture/community score cards on smallholder farmers’ access to extension
services held in Abuja.
The
Food and Agriculture Programme Coordinator, Action Aid Nigeria, Mr Azubike
Nwokoye, disclosed during the meeting that there is room for the federal
government to revamp the extension services as the non operation of the services
has seriously affected the development of agriculture across the country.
He called on the federal government to make
sincere its process of fertilizer distribution and sales.
He
explained that the activities of the extension agents would have helped the
farmers to perform well, but that their absence had created a vacuum that
needed to be urgently bridged by the federal government so that farmers could
get access to information, inputs and improved technologies for increased
productivity year round.
Nwokoye
said that the lack of budgetary allocations, mobility, staff training among
others, were expected to be restored to help extension agents perform effectively
as expected.
He stressed that government needed to employ
more workers with technical knowhow on how to meet with the needs of the
farmers’ in the rural areas in order to reduce the ratio of one extension
personnel to ten thousand farmers as and asked considering employing trained
worked workers.
Speaking
to journalists, the Secretary of the Small Scale Women Farmers Organization in
Nigeria, Chizioke Ihuoma Peace disclosed that the extinction of the extension
agents is a curse to agriculture as many of the farmers’ have lost a lot of
funds and crops to flooding, pest and diseases, due to the absence of the
extension officers who monitor and play the role of advisory officers on
climate change, new technologies, and inputs to use during farming.
She
added that the recent flooding experienced in most of the states would have
been averted if only the extension agents were on ground, adding that the
activities of the extension workers were crippled due to the nonchalant
attitude of the government toward repositioning the sector.
She said that agriculture without the extension
agents will not work as most farmers were novices to most of the technologies
they use.
She
further called on the government to take responsibility and restore the workers
so that farmers can learn how to do agribusiness in a more profitable way.
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