Kachia, a local government headquarters in the southern part of Kaduna State in northern Nigeria, is a centre of the ginger trade. Middlemen and traders often arrived in their vehicles to buy the root crop from peasant farmers in the area before a massive shock disrupted the trade in 2023.
PREMIUM TIMES reported how ginger farmers in Kachia and other parts of Kaduna lost an estimated N12 billion to a fungal disease epidemic that destroyed their ginger crops.
|
|
The federal government, led by President Bola Tinubu, responded to the disaster by establishing a N1.6 billion Ginger Recovery Advancement and Transformation for Economic Empowerment (GRATE) fund to enable the farmers to participate in the new planting season.
The state government also announced a scheme to support the farmers through the Kaduna State Agricultural Development Agency (KADA). Both intervention programmes provided farm inputs such as fertilisers, agrochemicals, crop protection products, and maize and sorghum seeds to the farmers.
|
|
|
|---|
Announcing the federal intervention fund last March, Mohammed Ibrahim, the executive director of the National Agricultural Development Fund (NADF), said it would be accessible to farmers in seven local government areas: Kachia, Jaba, Kagarko, Zangon-Kataf, Kaura, Jema’a and Sanga in southern Kaduna.
A promise on air
However, PREMIUM TIMES’ investigation last August and follow-up interviews in January showed that many farmers did not receive the support. What they needed most was the ginger seed, whose price per bag soared to about N210,000 last year.
“Life has been harsh since the 2023 epidemic, but my pains increased seeing some farmers accessing the government intervention funds while others like me got nothing,” Innocent Isaac, 42, who resides in Gumel in the Kachia Local Government Area, said.
Mr Isaac’s statement confirms that some farmers in the area benefitted from the government intervention. However, many others did not, raising concerns about the mode of distribution.
Many farmers in Kachia, Jaba, and Zango Kataf local government areas told this newspaper that they did not benefit. Some turned to other trades, such as commercial taxi operations, to make ends meet amidst the country’s soaring cost of living crisis.
Alice Abel, 43, said he was relieved that the Nigerian government had launched a support fund for ginger farmers.
“But, we waited and waited and saw nothing. Now, my younger brother has run away from home. My labourers are jobless, and hunger is biting us,” she said.
Mrs Abel concentrated on farming after losing her job as a teacher in the 2017 retrenchment exercise by the Nasir El-Rufai-led Kaduna State government. When she could not afford ginger seeds for the new season, following the 2023 loss, she turned to maize and soya beans.
Shifting crops
“I lost all my ginger crops to the blight infestation, so I had to find an alternative to sustain my family,” said Patience Luka, a smallholder farmer in Zango Kataf LGA.
Sitting in front of her thatched hut, the 35-year-old mother of five was shelling a heap of desiccated groundnuts when she narrated her experience. She said she has not gotten any support from either the federal or state government.
“The government used middlemen to distribute the fund, so it did not reach anyone here. We have village heads; why can’t they take it to them?” another farmer, Istephanius Yohana, quipped. “The village head knows everyone, and we know how to demand our rights from him.
“I have switched to yams and maize. I cannot just sit and be watching,” Mr Yohanna said.
A deadly waterloo
Fidelis Dutse, a lecturer at the Agricultural Research Institute, Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) Zaria, said the situation may affect ginger farming in Kaduna.
“This is because the production cost is now very high. It is not easy to acquire seeds for planting, let alone fertilisers. The prices of labour and agrochemicals have also skyrocketed. The farmers are in a dilemma,” the lecturer, who hails from Jaba, added.
Mr Dutse said that the distribution of agricultural inputs had always followed partisan lines. “In the case of the ginger farmers, the real farmers have not gotten it. Maybe 10 out of thousands of farmers get it,” he added.
John Ayuba, the village head of Hurgyan in Zango Kataf, said 471 farmers registered for the fund in his community, but none received government support.
“Life is difficult here, and the government does not care about us. Ginger seed is now gold in the market,” he lamented.
Shifting blames
When presented with our findings, the Kaduna State Government said the government could not help every farmer due to limited resources. However, the state government also had a separate fund and encouraged farmers to switch crops.
Bege Bungwon, the state director of agriculture, told PREMIUM TIMES that before the federal intervention fund was distributed in March 2024, the state government kicked off its support scheme in September 2023. He said many farmers benefited from that.
“The NADF support for the affected communities was used to procure palliatives and farm inputs like agro-chemical products, fertilisers and seeds of other crops that we advised the farmers to be planting since they cannot get ginger again,” he said.
NADF and KADA ignored PREMIUM TIMES’ Freedom of Information (FOI) requests for details on how their intervention funds were disbursed.
However, Mr Bungwon said that because the affected farmers’ demand outweighs the allocated resources, many people may not have benefitted from the intervention schemes, hence the complaints.
“I’m not surprised every farmer does not get this intervention. No one should be taken aback if something of such nature does not reach all and sundry because the list used to do such distribution did not even capture everyone. So, blame human errors,” the director told PREMIUM TIMES.
He denied that the funds were distributed to ruling party supporters alone. “I would be disappointed if they were given based on political party lines.”
This newspaper also contacted Ibrahim Kasir, the All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN) president, about the farmers’ association’s role in the distribution.
Mr Kasir directed our reporter to Edward Florence, the president of the Ginger Growers Association of Nigeria. However, Mrs Florence did not respond to our calls and text messages.
