Farmers ask President Buhari for fertilizer rescue against 2021 rainy season

The Nigerian farmers have called on President Muhammadu Buhari to make provision for fertilizer availability through the flagship of Presidential Fertilizer Initiative (PFI) for year 2021 rainy season farming towards ensuring food security saying importation of the products must be totally discouraged.

This was contained in a statement signed by the National President of All Farmers Associaition of Nigeria (AFAN)  Architect Kabiru Ibrahim and made available to Food Farm News.

Kabiru said in the press release that the rainy season farming is around the corner with high cost of fertilizers which he believed could be mitigated through enough support that would ensure soonest flagship of PFI towards food security across the states of the federation, saying that a large number of farmers were last year assisted through the N5, 000.00 sale for last year, to cushion the effect of covid 19 pandemic. 

The press release expressed fear of not likely to experience the timely release of new price for the year and the commodity itself, adding that ‘’the rainy season farming is around the corner and the cost of fertilizer is skyrocketing while the PFI is yet to release its flagship 20:10:10 and its price’’ 

Also the statement credited the findings of prices of fertilizer across the six Geo-political zones to the chairmen of AFAN in such regions with NPK selling between N6,700 and N8,000.00 while urea goes for N13,000.00 presently as farmers in some states in the South East have commenced production without any PFI subsidy reaching them.

AFAN president pointed in the statement that the commitment and passion of President Buhari were being sabotaged by people around him, thereby the need PFI must be encouraged so as to be able to avert imminent food crisis in the entire nation.

It was stated in the release that the Dangote fertilizers should be encouraged for availability being  able to distribute the products across the nation like coca cola saying it would give  farmers  a choice and competitive price as they called on the President to kindly intervene in this matter to assist the farmers to serve Nigerians better.