Oxfam, a
development, relief and campaigning nongovernmental organisation that
works with other partners to find solution to poverty around the world
said that small scale farmers are being marginalised in the
implementation of policies that should impact positively on their
enterprises across Nigeria.

Ojobo Atuluku, lead
consultant of Development in Practice, engaged by Oxfam to access the
impact of the NGO0 programmes on some Nigerian farmers in the last one
year said the government would be able to go only so far in achieving
food security until the disregard of small scale farmers is erased.

Unfriendly policies

Presenting her
report at the annual monitoring and evaluation meeting of Oxfam and
partners in Abuja yesterday, Ms. Atuluku said “I have been in the field
looking at Oxfam work in the past year and by field, I mean the states
of Oyo, Ekiti, Nassarawa, Plateau, Benue, Katsina and FCT, and the
focus has been interacting with small scale farmers that Oxfam has been
working with as well as the partner organisations in those states and
all across it is so clear that small scale farmers find agricultural
policies very unfriendly.”

Ms. Atuluku said
that the complaints of the farmers remain that they are “invisible
within agricultural policy and that it is not possible for them to
benefit from those policies. The story across the country surrounds
issues of input, fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides, tractors, credit
facilities. They do not have access to all these and so the challenge
becomes ‘why is this the case even as the federal and state government
are placing a lot of emphasis on agricultural issues?’”

Marginalisation of small scale farmers

Ms. Atuluku cited
the example of how the federal government came up with a scheme that
provides N200 billion for farmers. N40bilion out of this had been set
aside for small scale farmers, but the conditions are that the farmers
must provide collateral. Unfortunately, this excludes farms with low
value.

“All these are conditions that the small scale farmers have no clue or access to,” she said.

This therefore
means that even if that money is set aside for small scale farmers, it
will remain un-accessed or eventually be gotten by people who are not
small scale farmers.

Ajayeoba Ayodeji,
campaign manager of Oxfam, said the meeting was an avenue to validate
the report of the consultant and plan ahead for effective delivery of
their mandate.

“We have
commissioned a consultant to go into field to go and meet with partners
and Nigerian NGOs that we work with communities where we are working
basically to access the impact of the work we are doing, the challenges
and the opportunities and lessons we have learnt. We sit here and
verify it,” said Mr. Ayodeji.

He said all the
efforts are geared towards improving the productivity of small scale
farmers and engaging the government for improved agricultural
governance while providing opportunities for women that will help
reduce inequality and poverty and support Nigeria attain food
sufficiency.

Voices for food security

One of the farmers, Amina Bala Jibrin from Bauchi State, said Oxfam programmes have been very impactful.

“Oxfam constituted the voices for food security and they want the
small scale farmers to be heard,” Ms. Jibrin said. “It is a very good
idea because farmers in the rural areas are not given proper attention.
What is due to them is not given to them. They do not benefit from
inputs because it has to go through other channels before it comes to
the small scale farmer it is gone.”