ActionAid Nigeria has stated that Nigeria farmers, especially the rural women farmers have little or no extension engagement.
The ActionAid Nigeria coordinator of Food and Agricultural Programme, AzubikeNwokoye, disclosed this recently in Abuja at Community Participatory Assessment of Government Expenditure on Agriculture/Community Score Cards on Smallholder Women Access to Extension Services organised by ActionAid Nigeria.
He said 66% to 84% of the women farmers in all the state are not aware of Agricultural Development Programme (ADP) and extension service.
And that the women farmers only have access to less than 20% of Agricultural resources.
He noted that the ADP extension service was poor with a mean score of 1.75% in all states.
Nwokoye said that, between 2012-2016 only 43.8% of the total budget allocated to the state ADPs was released.
According to him, women farmers make up 70% of Agricultural labour, 50% of animal husbandry related activities and 60% food processing activities in Agricultural extension service.
He pointed out that the aim of Agricultural extension service was to meet present and emerging challenges, to improve farmers productivity, improve their quality of life and also take advantage of market opportunities.
He added that the Federal Department of Agricultural extension is to provide leadership, coordination,policy direction for extension, quality assurance and control and facilitation assistance to the states.
There are seven state involved in ADPs by the ActionAidprogramme to deliver effective and efficient Agricultural extension service to small-scale women farmers in Nigeria.The states are Bauchi, Delta, Ebonyi, Fct, Gombe, Kogi, Kwara and ondo.
The coordinator also said that in the 7 states, the extension service performance rating is very poor and not encouraging
“Government also need to make sure that they provide adequate opportunity within the budget for extension service agents to be trained and re trained” he counselled.
