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The Kogi State Coordinator, National Programme for Food Security (NPFS), Dr. Ameh Onoja, has said that a total sum of N100million loan has been disbursed to farmers in the state.
He made this disclosure in a chat with journalists at the Akpamoba community farm site in Lokoja, Kogi State.
The State coordinator stated that the project was privilege to get support from the State government through prompt payment of the counter-part fund.
“The counter-part fund for our food security is from both the federal, state and the local governments; this has enabled us to meet the request of farmers. However, before now farmers were not in cooperative groups, but now we have over 300 cooperatives that we are working directly with,” he said.
He noted that 11 module agro-processing centres have been established for farmers this year, adding that about 7 rice processing centres already have storage facilities which would boost food security in the state.
Onoja reiterated government’s effort at improving the standard of living of farmers, pointing out that a number of Kogi farmers were undergoing training in the state in order to improve their capacity to run agricultural ventures as business so that at the end of the project intervention, farmers would have reached the level of accessing credit from financial institutions.
In an exclusive chat with Leadership, the chairman, Akpamoba Multi-purposes Cooperative Society, Mr. Adoga Shata, said that they have accessed the sum of N7.5 million so far and that about 100 groups have benefited from the NPFS programme, which ranges from crops, food complements and livestock production.
According to him, “This programme has transformed our lives, without fertiliser we farmers cannot get anything tangible from the farm, improved cassava seedlings from IITA Ibadan were also made available to us. We have gotten unprecedented assistance from the agency with the support of NPFS.”
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