By wole mosadomi

In a major policy decision that is bound to increase food production and end food shortages, hunger and starvation, the Niger State Government has given its nod to workers to engage in more aggressive farming and food production while still working for it.

The measure is to stave off the negative effect of prolonged attacks by insurgents and bandits on key food production centres, which have dislocated farmers and disruption sustained massive food production in the state, leading to fears of food shortage and unavoidable price hikes.

Niger State has in recent months become the playground for bandits and kidnappers, who now engage in school invasion and large scale abductions of students and teachers while overrunning communities and seizing their means of livelihood. But in a bid to counter the negative effects of these disruptions, the Niger State Government has gone into partnership with the Central Bank of Nigeria and Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria, RIFAN, towards boosting agriculture in the State. It has also incorporated civil servants in the state into its food production mechanism.

As a result of the policy reset, no fewer than 6,000 workers from across the 25 local government areas have signified their interest in the new scheme being spearheaded by the state in collaboration with the CBN and RIFAN.

Arewa Voice count indicated that 2,000 of the workers are from the local government areas while the remaining 4,000 are core state civil servants. The State Governor, Alhaji Abubakar Sani Bello, said at the inauguration of the project at the Farm Centre at Tunga that the move was to turn the state into an agriculture and food production hub with the active involvement of workers from across the state.

Bello said: “My plan is to move the state of civil servants to a more productive state with the engagement of its workforce in agricultural programmes. We are going to support the programme in order to make civil servants employers of labour thereby creating wealth, employment and reduce poverty in the state. Our plan is to move Niger State from civil servant to productive state.

There are many staff without work schedule where you have about two desks with ten staff which is why many of them don’t go to work and their absence are not missed and we continue to pay huge bills as salaries because the state labour cost takes over 80 percent of our resources.

“We are thinking of a state where civil servants would move from employees to employers because, in programme like this, a lot of them would become employers. If civil servants embrace this programme, they would be meaningfully engaged and get more than their wages at the end of the month from the programme and would be able to cater for their expenses.” The governor, however, applauded RIFAN and the HoS in the state for their effort to transform the economy of the state and its workers through agriculture.

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The HoS, Hajia Salamatu Abubakar, described the programme as a remarkable social intervention for the workforce and an alternative route for poverty reduction as well as boosting food production, especially rice. She said: “From available records, a total of 2000 local government workers and 4000 from the state civil service have keyed into the programme and more are still showing interest.”

She called on all eligible civil servants to take advantage of the programme as alternative means of income to supplement their salaries and make them self reliant in the nearest future.

RIFAN coordinator in the state, Alhaji Idris Usman Makanta, said the association had mapped out 813,916 hectares of cultivatable land in the state for the programme with 66,000 earmarked for maize cultivation, 100,000 for Sesame cultivation.

Makanta added that the CBN has also approved 250,000 hectares of land for rice cultivation out of which 50,000 hectares had been allocated to the civil servants including academics and youths.

He said farm inputs had already been provided for the beneficiaries for a smooth take-off of the scheme, adding that with this initial take off, each beneficiary is expected to realise a minimum of 60 bags per hectare and is expected to pay back the loan with eight bags of rice after harvesting.

Some of the beneficiaries expressed gratitude to the Niger State government, Central Bank of Nigeria and the Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria for introducing the programme and giving them the opportunity to participate. One of them, Abubakar Muhammad, said the opportunity was a life-changing one, which he had always been exploring and thanked God for its manifestation in his lifetime. He added: “I am going to use this opportunity to transit from subsistence to large scale farming in order to make more revenue and earn better income from my sweat.”

Another farmer identified as Ahmed said he did not need to be spoken to about the scheme and had to key into it given the massive benefits inherent in the programme. The Vice-Chairman of the state branch of All Farmers Association of Nigeria, Engineer Abdulraham Yusuf, described the scheme as timely and the best thing to happen to workers in the state.

Vanguard News Nigeria