Editorial- Agricultural subsidy without data

The issue of subsidy to agricultural inputs is as old as ages in the food production of Nigeria, both states and Federal Government (FG) had in several occasions assisted farmers especially small scale holders to boost crops and animal productions with inputs like fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides with several same being done in the livestock  without accurate data of the beneficiaries for the purpose of accountability which has made many people express doubt on the amount of money usually acclaimed to have been spent.

Growth Enhancement Scheme (GES) of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development ( FMARD) in the last eight years initiated by the former minister of agriculture, now President of African Development Bank (AfDB), Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina had attained some level of successes to checkmate corruption regularly peculiar of the sub sector through the use of electronic telephone transfer to get to farmers whose data have been captured until it was jettisoned.

It was on record that the technology  within three months was able to save Nigeria about 30 billion Naira usually being fraudulently spent on fertilizers without accountability of  being able to identify who and who gets all these inputs.

Between 2015 till 2020, we are tempted to ask which model of inputs distribution has been applied to give farmers subsidized inputs as we read news of fertilizers and other agricultural inputs being distributed without any specified amount and beneficiaries’ identification.

As much as we don’t want to query continuous agricultural subsidy without sustainable infrastructure towards productivity through the value chains of processing and marketing towards more jobs creation and wastages control, it will not be out of place to remind our government the need to maintain a centralised data base for farmers which can always be used to deploy inputs and other benefits to achieving accountability.

This will give governance a high credibility with accountability in terms of assistance to farmers against blanket support that usually had no data support. Although we may not want to play ignorant of the new farmers data which was generated by the youth enumerators under the office of Project for Agriculture Coordination and Execution (PACE) under the office of the Vice President in 2020 in partnership with the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) to give last year fertilizer subsidy to farmers for 2021 wet season farming.

The point still remains that a process like this must be sustained for constant use to giving support to farmers in a very accountable way to food security and commercialization of the sector to revenue generation of the country.