NGO emphasizes role of extension services in agric

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.