Between roads and agriculture in Nasarawa State

There is therefore a striking relationship between agriculture and roads. In the past, Nasarawa state farmers toiled day in day out to cultivate barely enough, using crude methods, largely, to feed the family and sell the excess, where excess was available at all, in the open market. But the headache of accessing even satellite markets […]

There is therefore a striking relationship between agriculture and roads. In the past, Nasarawa state farmers toiled day in day out to cultivate barely enough, using crude methods, largely, to feed the family and sell the excess, where excess was available at all, in the open market. But the headache of accessing even satellite markets was more than an ordinary headache to the average farmer; it was a migraine, for, there were no roads to ease the movement of farm products from the hinterland to the market centres. This availed ample opportunity for the middlemen to feed fat on the innocent farmers. And they did feed fat indeed on the local farmers! Farming as an occupation was virtually becoming a distraught and frustrating business. Young men were increasingly distancing themselves from the occupation. Except for a few, no farmer in the state could say he was breaking even before the advent of the Doma administration.

Alhaji Aliyu Akwe Doma has since he took over the reigns of power in 2007, innovated a series of interventions which have brought a new lease of life to the farmers and transformed Nasarawa State into a modern agrarian community.

Under the aegis of Badakoshi Agricultural Scheme, a creation of Governor Doma, not less than two hundred tractors and billions of naira as soft loans have been put in the hands of the ordinary farmers in the past three years. The entire landscape of Nasarawa State has taken on a new dignified outlook befitting a state now regarded by all and sundry in Nigeria as the undisputed leader of the science of modern agriculture.

At the launch of the second edition of the programme on 3rd August, 2010, the Madauchin Doma remarked that the Badakoshi Scheme represented a clarion call for the movement for a Green Revolution in Nasarawa State. The ennobling words of encouragement from the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Professor Sheikh Ahmad Abdallah, who announced that the initiative of the scheme is not just laudable, it is so novel that it will be incorporated in the National Agricultural Policy. Also at the occasion, Governor Patrick Yakowa of Kaduna State, acknowledged that Nasarawa’s potentials, coupled with Doma’s efforts, makes her not only the leader in agriculture, but one with the capacity to feed the nation.

The package of agricultural loans have a whole one year as period of moratorium to enable the farmer prepare, reap the benefit of investment and commence repayment with ease. Even the repayment is so relaxed; the farmer’s burden is spread across three years. And, to think that the financial aspect of the loan attracts only a meagre single digit interest rate, no doubts, marks out the Badakoshi Scheme as the harbinger of the state of el-dorado in the country.

The Doma administration is perhaps, the first in Nigeria to demonstrate this high level of farmer-friendliness.

In the past two years, many youths have returned to the farms. And so have many women- farmer groups.  Farming has been made more interesting, less physically strenuous, and more lucrative, through the administration’s innovative interventions.

Already, the Nasarawa State Pepa Yam launched over a year ago in London has been a huge success, which every Nasarawa state citizen is proud of.

By and large, Nasarawa state is now good news for local farmers whose opportunities have more than trebled in the domestic markets.

Over and above everything, new vistas of opportunities now abound in the international markets for Nasarawa farmers and access to those foreign markets have been facilitated 100% by the Doma administration.

On the whole, it can well be said, that Nasarawa state has set the stage, to indeed feed the nation and the world at large. As every Nigerian now seems to agree, Nasarawa state may have arrived at its golden age as far as agriculture is concerned. And this is the time to say, in the words of the Latin, to the lucky people of Nasarawa state, ‘nulla deditio’, for indeed, this is the time they must carry on by taking their destiny in their hands. They must never give in.

Mohammad Ohitoto wrote from Lafia, Nasarawa State.