How farmer, 47 children survive without govt support

Malam Abdullahi is the Chairman, Tudun Wada Fadama Multipurpose Society Nigeria Limited, located along Sardauna Crescent, Kaduna in Kaduna State, where crops including rice, beans and vegetables such as garden eggs, tomatoes,  and sugarcane, among others are grown.He spoke with our correspondent when she visited the farm. He said “many years back, we in the […]

Malam Abdullahi is the Chairman, Tudun Wada Fadama Multipurpose Society Nigeria Limited, located along Sardauna Crescent, Kaduna in Kaduna State, where crops including rice, beans and vegetables such as garden eggs, tomatoes,  and sugarcane, among others are grown.
He spoke with our correspondent when she visited the farm. He said “many years back, we in the North used to lead in agricultural activities, before the coming of oil. Then, I remember how we used to transport our farm produce to Lagos.
“We know nothing but farming in those days unlike today that people pay attention to oil. We that are still in the farming business, some people laugh at us because they see us as illiterates, but we always remind them that without us, the food they eat wouldn’t have been possible to get to them, and there will be hunger in the land,” he said.
He called on wealthy individuals in the land to partner with local farmers so that they can continue feeding the nation, noting that “the teeming unemployed youth can also be gainfully employed through agriculture.
“Presently, I have nothing to say than to continue praising Allah for making it easy for us all these years. Inadequate fertilizer, insecticides and other farming equipment are some of the major problems we are facing in this business of ours. Sometimes the government provided subsidised fertilizers but it mostly ended up in the hands of those who are not farmers.
“For instance, the government should have given a trailer of fertilizer to this farm alone but we were given just few bags which some of us had to forego for our other members. We still thank the government for the little we got because sometimes we don’t even get any,” he lamented.
Malam Abdullahi also said that he and his members are registered with both the federal and state governments for fertilizer subsidy, adding that “in my group I have about 81 registered members.
“I have four wives and 60 children but am left now with 47 children. The good thing here is that I feed them through this farming. We dress like any other person in the society and ride on motorcycle of our choice because God gave it to us.
“I appeal to government to pay more attention to farming; the government should also encourage other farmers to go into irrigation farming. They should also monitor the activities of fake farmers who move around ministries claiming they are farmers while they are not. All of us working here cooperate with each other and the marketing of the products is never a problem for us because our customers come here to buy from us,” he said.
On his part, Secretary, Tudun Wada Fadama Multipurpose Society Nigeria Limited, Ibrahim Hamza Musa, said last year, the mobile phone fertilizer forms introduced by the federal government were brought for the farmers to fill which they did without wasting time, but unfortunately when the list came out, some people’s names were not on it.
“This year, they invited us to their office and when we got there, we saw the remaining forms from last year, so they told us not to worry because some of us whose names were not out last year need not to fill another form, that they are going to use last year’s forms to apply on our behalf this year.
“As you know, this year, almost every farmer on the project was given an identity card that he will use to collect his fertilizer, some of us who didn’t register this year were not given the identity cards. This is why I can say none of us received or got the fertilizer in this farm, but we are buying from those we know who got. We pay them a little bit higher,” he said.
On how that has affected their farming he said, “if fertilizer will be sold N100,000, we have no choice than to buy it because we need it to do our work and cannot do without it. This is because farming is the only work we do for a living, whether they subsidise it or not, we must look for it to buy.”
On how important and useful fertilizer is to farmers, he said, “there was a time a bag of fertilizer cost more than a bag of maize due to inadequate fertilizer, insecticides and other chemicals used in farms, which affected the prices of foodstuffs in the country because we had to continue buying the fertilizer to use on our farms.”
He called on both the federal and state governments to device a means of subsidising the sales of farm machinery and equipment such as tractors and harvesters with a view to turning around the fortunes of agriculture in the country, adding that “tractors are not for the poor because they are too expensive, if the government so wish they can subsidise all these things for farmers.”