By Vincent A. YUSUF
THE Nasarawa State government’s input support delivery system, which favours men, is making things worse for smallholder women farmers, an investigation reveals.
Smallholder women farmers in the state are experiencing a bigger disparity compared to male farmers due to the government’s input supports distribution structure, which does not provide equal access to inputs, Weekend Trust gathered.
Despite the fact that women account for 70-75 per cent of the agricultural workforce, according to the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) and the International Budget Office (IBP), women farmers’ organisations alleged that their demand for government support has not received much attention.
Statistics from various sources estimated that there are 38 million smallholder farmers in Nigeria and 70 per cent (26 million) are women. However, a larger proportion of men typically profit from the country’s agricultural inputs support than women, according to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI)’s Datastore.
Though the 2019 National Gender Policy in Agriculture aims to guarantee that gender-responsive and gender-sensitive approaches are employed in agricultural project planning and execution, providing women with equal access to productive resources and the opportunity to realise their full potential, implementation is woefully inadequate.
In Nasarawa State particularly, gender policy in agriculture has not been successfully implemented; despite women’s inability to compete with men, they are not given any special recognition in the agricultural input distribution structure – not even in the budget.
Although Nasarawa State is predominantly an agrarian state with over 70 per cent of the population involved in subsistence farming according to the state investment and development agency (NASIDA), only N9.6bn (4.81 per cent) of the N199.8bn state budget for 2024 went to agriculture.
Out of the N9.6bn allocated to agriculture, N5.6bn went to capital expenditure, with none (zero per cent) of these targeted women-specific projects, something even officials at the state Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources admitted.
Earlier, the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) did a “Pullout of Women in Agriculture Projects in the 2024 Nasarawa State Budget” as an empowering and advocacy tool to guide women farmers on the possibility of engaging MDAs at the budget preparation stage so that their voices can be heard in specific projects that will improve their productivity.
Attempts by the Small-scale Women Farmers Organisation in Nigeria (SWOFON), a coalition of women farmers associations and groups, to engage government in the state using that information tool, have not been successful, Jummai Yohanna, state Chairperson of the group said.
Governor Abdullahi Sule while flagging off input distribution in Awe LGC in July, said “The 147 wards of the state will receive not less than 16,000 bags (of fertiliser) while other farmers’ associations, disability groups, religious groups, traditional institutions will also benefit from the free fertilisers provided by the President Tinubu government to boost food production in the state.”
However, groups like SWOFON said they did not benefit from that gesture.
While also speaking with journalists in Abuja, the governor said the state has decided to double its efforts in input support to farmers adding that “If we were initially providing 13,000 bags of fertiliser to farmers, we will now increase it to 26,000 bags. This proactive step is taken in recognition of the challenges faced by farmers, and the government is well-positioned to offer support to smallholder farmers.”
However, Yohanna is not happy with the state government and painted the picture of women farmers’ continued struggle in the state, which she said, is demoralising.
“Nobody cares about us. We went on several advocacy visits to the Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources, yet at the end of the day, when they see us coming, they lock the doors against us because they feel we were disturbing them,” Yohanna told Weekend Trust.
She said the productivity of women is declining because the most needed inputs end up mostly with men, while access to tractors or even small women-friendly equipment is totally absent, adding that the women farmers have nowhere else to turn to.
In her village, Ikposogye, in Obi Local Government Area (LGA), Weekend Trust gathered that fewer than 10 bags of fertiliser that got to the community were taken over by men, according to women who spoke with our reporter.
Some women farmers said they rent farmland at a cost between N20,000 and N30,000 depending on the size of the land, but more costs pile up due to reliance on manual labour, which is very expensive, thereby, forcing many of them to reduce their farm size.
Yohanna and her group are actively involved in the production of rice, sesame, groundnut, cassava and other crops. Each of them needs an average of eight bags of fertiliser and other inputs to have good yields. None of them got help in this regard.
“We have been pleading with the state government for four years to take our situation into consideration, but to no avail. Members are actually no longer hopeful. We are met with closed doors by government authorities. Sometimes, all we hear about is the distribution of inputs, but when you go there, there are no provisions for women. Men manage the entire distribution system, and they will typically consider their interests first,” she said.
In Obi, Rahab Dauda has been growing rice and other commodities for more than 20 years as a smallholder farmer. The cost of using manual labour makes it difficult for her to find reasonably priced mechanisation to support her growth.
“I wish to grow the farm, but we don’t see tractors here. Even if you see, it has to finish men’s fields before it can come our way because they are the ones who bring them. If we had those small farm machines, we would not have to wait for them. And by the time they’re done with them, they are already heading to other places that have better work waiting for them, you know. This is our plight,” she said.
Hanatu Guyit is another woman who grows rice and melon. Even though she was able to get a tractor to work on her farm, she said that it was not an easy task because it takes a lot of time and the manual labour is even more expensive.
Speaking in front of her rice field, Guyit said most of the inputs get to men who sometimes “do what they want with it” adding that “we the women who need it most hardly get it.”
In Lafia, Victoria David, 50, a member of SWOFON and a farmer who grows rice, beans, sorghum and cassava in Mile Uku community said like other women who have suffered for years without assistance, she and other women in the area have to rely largely on their own efforts to support themselves because government assistance was not forthcoming.
“Our female colleagues are eager to increase output, but input is the issue. Government focuses less on women, and many of us are unable to reach our full potential because of the cost of these inputs,” she said.
Laraba Alkali, another female farmer in the area, noted that most of their farms suffered this year because cost of inputs rose significantly in the middle of production, making it difficult to access input due to absence of government support.
In the same vein, the chairperson of SWOFON in Doma LGA, Kizia James Waziri, told the Weekend Trust that the smallholder women farmers there are currently facing a number of difficulties, including high input costs, insecurity, and a lack of government assistance. Their productivity is being negatively impacted by these.
She and other female farmers in the area did not get any government input support, despite living less than 150 meters away from the deputy governor (Emmanuel Akabe)’s home in Doma town.
Like other women in the area, Zuwaira Isa is a farmer who wants to increase the output of her millet, cassava and other crops but faces numerous obstacles and is left on her own without government assistance.
She listed some of the obstacles to include lack of access to quality seeds, fertiliser, herbicides and mechanisation.
“I have to reduce my farm size because the cost of fertiliser and agrochemicals was too high for me. In place of fertiliser, I had to bring in cow dungs from a Fulani settlement and rice husk from other places to spread on my farm. It was cheaper than fertiliser,” she said.
According to sources who asked not to be named in this report, some of those who benefited from the fertiliser distribution sold the input even at the venue of the distribution.
This reporter, who posed as a buyer, got offers from those who benefited. Some offered to sell at N25,000 (for both NPK and Urea 50kg bag), which was far less than the market value of N41,000 for urea (Indorama blend) and N39,000 for NPK 20:10:10 blend.
In Akwanga LGA, some of the men who got inputs at the distribution centre along Akwanga-Keffi Road resold to those who operate input shops at cheaper rates.
A beneficiary offered to sell two bags of urea and NPK with herbicide for just N50,000. These same products could fetch about N100,000 in the open market. He got the input as a member of a youth group.
A smallholder farmer from Akwanga, Ladi Aku, said it has been increasingly difficult to produce crops without support this year due to rising inflation, which has affected not only inputs but also cost of labour.
At Sabo Gida area of Kokona, Mrs Rebecca who is a widow with six children could not even afford one bag of fertiliser this year because of the cost. Instead, she had to use ashes and cow dungs to apply in one of the farms she planted maize.
“Where do I see money to buy fertiliser with all these problems—children’s food, school fees, cloth, hospital bill all on me and I have never received any input support from government to farm. I only heard few bags of fertilisers were given in the town,” she said.
How inputs were distributed – Government
Reacting to some of the issues, the Permanent Secretary, Nasarawa State Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources, Abdullahi Umar, explained how the state government gets input to women farmers.
“Generally, smallholder women farmers are supported with farm input via a standing committee at their local government and development area headquarters respectively. The committee includes chairmen of LGAs and overseers of Development Areas, paramount rulers, Divisional Police Officers (DPOs) agriculture coordinators, councillors of agriculture, and other heads of security personnel etc. Sometimes they also obtain their farm inputs from Nasarawa State (Fadama 3/NG-cares). Recently, they were supported with farm inputs directly at wards levels across the state,” the permanent secretary said.
He, however, said that in all these “Women are usually involved in structures that provide support for the state’s farm inputs.”
Reacting to the inequality in accessing support between men and women farmers, Abdullahi admitted that “what they say is a real fact because the percentage of men that normally benefit from the farm inputs in the state is more than that of the women.”
What SWOFON, stakeholders suggest
Stakeholders have recommended ways to improve the inclusion of women in all stages of budget processes, including establishing one committee composed solely of representatives from women’s organisations in the state to handle any assistance the state government wishes to provide smallholder women farmers with.
The Programme officer, SWOFON, Chika Orji, said although Nasarawa State has made women farmers part of the budget committee this year, which has never happened before, the state is, however, far behind in the social inclusion of women farmers in the schemes of things, adding that “their voices are not being amplified” despite constituting the largest labour force in the sector.
She said now that the government has involved women in the budget process, their demands and challenges need to be considered, adding that there is a current donor intervention collecting data of smallholder women farmers in the state for evidence-based advocacy.
She called on the government to treat women as an entity for proper representation.
“SWOFON is an entirely women farmers organisation. So, it is there to amplify the voice of that rural woman farmer, which needs to be heard; so that when government is taking a decision, they are treated as an entity, separate from the men. There is every need to separate the women from the men,” Orji said.
In a similar position, Moses Agha, a retired staff of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security in Lafia said “combining women with men will make it difficult to track what proportion of the support went to women. Such women committee should exist even at the ward and local government level and with that, you can tell how many bags of fertiliser, quantity of agrochemicals or other inputs went to women in all the 13 local government areas of the state.
They contended that doing so would facilitate the state government’s ability to monitor the annual and actual amount of assistance provided to women farmers.
This report was made possible with support from the International Centre for Investigative Reporting ICIR
