The women leader of Alayare community, in Ondo State, Chief Folsshade Ogunsusi, has lamented the inability of the State government to women farmers from herdsmen invasion of their farmlands.
Ogunsusi who was in tears while speaking at the just concluded 2-day annual National Farmers Forum for smallholder women farmer across the 36 states in Nigeria.
Explaining her predicament, Ogunsusi, said she was part of the women that got N122,000 loan from the Bank of Agriculture (BOA), through the Small-Scale Women Farmers Organisation in Nigeria (SWOFON), however, the cassava farms they invested the money on was destroyed by the herdsmen who grazed their cattle on the entire farms.
“When I got to my farm, I couldn’t recognise it, it was like a deliberate action to destroy the farms because when I got there, after they grassed on the cassava, they went ahead to destroy even the reggise, now I can’t pay the loan back, because I committed the entire fund in the farm and I couldn’t get anything out of it.
“Even the little we got out of the remnant they left, we have processed them into garri but no one wants to buy it. We just stored it there without hope of selling it at profitable rate.”
“We drew the government attention to this but we haven’t seen any response. This also affected some of those in government that have farms, but they are not doing anything about it,” she said.
She stated further that the repayment of the loan is her major concern as she invested everything into the farm.
