- Beg Alia For Intervention
- Agric Commissioner, BNARDA DG Debunk Allegation
By Amos Aar
THE ASSOCIATION of United Farmers of Benue-Valley (AUFBV) has accused the Benue State Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security and a parastatal under it, the Benue Agriculture and Rural Development Authority (BNARDA) of denying genuine farmers farming inputs like fertilizer and herbicides and diverting same to people with financial muscle to make brisk business.
Fielding questions from journalists at the state secretariat of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Makurdi on Saturday shortly after he submitted a letter of complaint addressed to Governor Hyacinth Alia and copied to NUJ chairman, AUFVB president, Dennis Denen Gbongbon Utsa, appealed to the governor to call the Commissioner of Agriculture and the Director General of BNARDA to stop the alleged misconduct and injustice being meted out on peasant farmers in their offices
Comrade Utsa, who said AUFBV has ten thousand, five hundred (10,500) registered farmers in Benue who need the farm inputs and over one hundred thousand (100,000) farmers across three states; Benue, Nasarawa and Taraba, lamented that at BNARDA, cooperative societies are supposed to be given fifty (50) bags of fertilizer for their members who are peasant farmers and can’t afford the cost of fertilizer which now stands at N42,000 but they are given just two bags while people who are rich and don’t need the fertilizer to farm are given trucks of the product to resell to the poor at high cost.
“Due to the economic hardship and inflation situation in the state and to alleviate the suffering of farmers, the Benue State Government under the good governance of His Excellency, Rev. Fr. Hyacinth Iormen Alia, PhD, the people’s Governor of Benue State granted subsidy of basic farming inputs to farmers, and directed the Agency, BNARDA, to sell all the farm inputs directly to farmers through cooperatives. But instead, BNARDA and staff deliberately refused to obey the instructions given and mischievously connived with market women and men to grab, seize, hold inputs especially agro-herbicide to sell and have created artificial scarcity of the product and are selling out to non-farmers actors for their private gain.
“The farmers are dehumanized, treated as second class citizens, subjected into mental, psychological, physical tortures, many of them have already paid for the inputs but were not giving up to date, the farmers were frustrated, disempowered and rendered inferior at the distribution point. The BNARDA staff diverted all and are selling at very higher prices for their private profit.
“Most of these farmers are IDPS, ejected away from their homes and currently taking refuge in various IDPs’ camps across Benue State of past 5 years. Many of them cannot afford to buy the herbicide at market price of N3,500, but can afford to buy at the government subsidy price of N1,700. But in a situation where the IDPs’ farmers were not sold from the source and exposes to buy from the market, when government have given out subsidy because of the farmers demand for your urgent intervention to stop the misconduct and protect the right of the farmers and ensure that the farmers take ownership of the sales in other to avert the danger of food insecurity and huger.
“We appeal, that the misconduct should stop and farmers should be treated fairly, and equitably and just in the sale and distribution of farming inputs at subsidy henceforth.
“We appreciate the humanitarian gesture of government under the good leadership of His Excellency, Rev. Fr. Hyacinth Alia PhD, Executive Governor of Benue State and pray for God protection and wisdom for better governance,” the AUFA President said.
Asked if he had evidence to prove the allegations, Utsa said his members went to BNARDA office to witness things by themselves and they will be ready to testify when called upon. He said they even complained to the staff but they gave them deaf ears.
“Just go to the Ministry of Agriculture, we have sent more than two cooperatives there. They are within the state here. The thing there is that before you get allocation from a Director of Agric, you must be loyal to him to cheat you. That is a fraudulent attitude. I have told my members not to collect 2 bags if they are not giving them 50 bags after approval. I said go and complain to the commissioner that they refused to give you and they went. But this is two weeks now and we have not received any response,” the AUFBV president said.
Receiving the letter of complaint, NUJ State chairman, Comrade Vincent Nyinongu, thanked the leadership of AUFBV for always speaking out for its members when injustice is done to them. He tasked journalists to investigate the allegations and report fairly and objectively.
In their separate reactions during phone interviews with National Record’s correspondent, Commissioner of Agriculture and Food Security, Prof. Moses Ogbaji, and a staff of BNARDA, Pastor Joseph Kulega, who spoke for his Director General, Mr Terese Ninga, debunked the allegation, describing it as false and mischievous.
Kulega said they don’t deal with cooperative societies but only individual farmers directly.
“There are two places where fertilizer is being distributed. Bureau is not dealing with cooperatives; they are giving directly to farmers while the Ministry of Agriculture is dealing with cooperative societies. If a truck of fertilizer is brought to bureau here wrongly and it’s being taken back because the allocation is not meant for the bureau and somebody concludes that the fertilizer is for an individual to go and resell, then, it’s a serious mischief,” Kulega said.
On his part, the Commissioner of Agriculture and Food Security, Prof. Moses Ogbaji, said the fertilizers were insufficient and the two bags given to cooperative societies are what were meant for them even as he described the indictment by the leadership of AUFBV as a blatant lie.
“His Excellency called my attention to that. That information is false, it’s a blatant lie. So, what happens in the ministry, because I am there and I don’t want to tell lies against the staff; what happened was that when we said cooperative societies should apply, we received applications from more than a thousand cooperative societies.
“So, we shortlisted the ones that we had before, six hundred and fifty-four (654), and remember; His Excellency approved two trucks of fertilizer. Two trucks are one thousand, two hundred bags.
“So, what we decided to do at the ministry was that let every cooperative society that applied get something. If you divide 1200 by 654, you will not even get up to two bags. But we said let the first people to come and get two bags each.
“Ukan Kurugh [a Benue-based social media activist] is the one who first started it. He wrote to the governor. I don’t know who is Ukan Kurugh. So, you can find out. He wrote to the governor and I explained to the governor that each cooperative society was given only two bags if you divide 1200 by 654, you will get less than two bags but the first 600 cooperative societies that would report would get two bags.
“That man who is saying that we approved 50, 50 was not approved by the ministry, they only applied. He applied for 50 but we didn’t approve 50 for him. I’m calling Ukan Kurugh but he is not picking his calls because he has told a blatant lie. Let him come to the ministry and substantiate his lie. You can come to the ministry yourself.
“We are carrying the rest of the applications and appeals to His Excellency to provide more fertilizer so that cooperative societies can get more,” Prof. Ogbaji said.
