FG To Commence Capturing Of Farmers For Comprehensive Farmer Register

The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security in Nigeria has teamed up with the National Identity Management Commission NIMC in the country in a MoU to create a farmer’s register to build a comprehensive data base of Nigerian farmers.

 

The move is to ensure proper planning, accurate input distribution, identify genuine farmers and eliminate portfolio farmers.

 

The National Identity Number NIN enabled process will involve capturing of individual farmer’s biometrics through NIMC, the farm land and location.

 

Speaking to journalists after signing an MoU with NIMC, the Minister of Agriculture and Food Security Senator Abubakar Kyari said the exercise would enable the government to identify genuine farmers that are in need of interventions and also how to channel the interventions.

 

“So that is where we are now going to actually register a genuine farmer, which will have only one biometric and one NIN number. So we know actually who we are going to, in terms of intervention, who we are going to target, and that is the first, we’ll have the primary information”

“and then the secondary information will now give us the location of the farmland, the geolocation of the farmland, the types of crops, the types of soil, the type of farm cultivation, whether it is irrigation or wet, rain-fed irrigation, rain-fed cultivation, and even, like I said, different types of crops.” He further explained.

 

Senator Kyari, while noting that being able to deal with genuine farmers in the country would save money, boost harvest and food security, stated that the pilot phase of the exercise, which will last 3 months, targets 2 million farmers.

 

While responding to questions from Journalists, the Director General of NIMC Engr. Bisoye Coker-Odusote said the organization would work to ensure genuine farmers were captured across the country.

 

“We have offices in every local government across the country and we also have state offices in every state, so we will be utilizing all of our resources to be able to ensure that goes down. So our teams have formed a working group and they are definitely going to go out in the field to operationalize the plan that has been agreed today, which we have signed in the MOU”

“ So we have, through our partnership with the private sector, we have the front-end partners who are working with NIMC in the community areas, so they would be able to reach out to the farmers.” She added.

 

She said the platform will be a set of verifiable records that will be available for the ministry to be able to plan effectively on how to ensure different government intervention programs are made available to these farmers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oyenike Oyeniyi