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The Kwara State Government has assured of its commitment to ensuring improvement in food and nutrition security for the healthy living of residents of the state.
The Senior Special Adviser (SSA) to the Governor on Security Matters, Alhaji Muhideen Aliyu, gave the assurance at the March 2024 Cadre Harmonize Food and Nutrition Security Analysis Results presentation in Ilorin, the state capital.
According to the statement released by the Press Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, Yusuf Ganiyu Adebisi said SSA Security Matters, told the group that the state Governor, Mallam AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, has lots of passion for agriculture by creating an enabling environment for farmers through its various intervention programmes in the sector and improved security network across the state.
He explained that the state is still relatively peaceful when compared to other states that are facing endemic insecurity, stressing that the state would continue to build on the existing security structure to ensure both food and human security.
“Though there have been records of some disturbances in some local governments, but security operatives were able to curtail them.
“A committee was created comprising the community leaders, herders, and farmers to ensure that issues or confrontations were neutralised.
“Over 300 vigilantes and hunters were in government payroll to ensure that they were part of security networks in the state, while government is working assiduously to ensure that peace prevails in the state”, Aliyu explained.
The State Task Force Team Coordinator, Cadre Harmonize, Mr. Olusoji Oyawoye, while presenting the results of the analysis, stated that food and other essential commodities were very expensive and increasingly becoming out of the reach of poor and other less privileged people in the state.
According to him, half of the population in the state were currently under stress, as it is difficult to get food, pointing out that people were just managing and struggling to eat these days.
The coordinator maintains that were it not for the compassionate efforts of the state government through its various palliative programmes, the situation would have been worse.
He identified increase in fuel prices and agricultural inputs, inflation, and activities of food crop merchants, as well as diversion of farmers interest to cash crops production instead of food crops, as being the main problem of food and nutrition insecurity in the state.
He, however, recommended the need to step up dry season farming while observing that more is needed to be done in the area of peace and dialogue between farmers and herders to forestall future conflicts.
“The state government needs to create a market and mop up most of the farm produce from farmers. This will ensure that the food stays in the state and people get access to it at a discounted rate from the government”, he said.
He appealed to the farmers to balance between food crops and cash crops production so that one does not suffer for the other.
Oyawoye further warned that inaccessibility and unaffordability of food create insecurity, pointing out that in order to have a secured society, there must be food accessibility and afffordability in the country.
On her part, the Managing Director, Kwara Agricultural Development Project, (KWADP), Dr. Khadijat Ahmed urged the government to employ more extension officers in order to reinvigorate the activities of the extension agents and also ensure appropriate funding for their activities.
She noted that most of the challenges facing the agricultural sector today are due to inadequate extension services and lack of knowledge on the part of the farmers in the country.
In his presentation, Dr. Habib Lawal, the Kwara Coordinator of Accelerating Nutrition Results in Nigeria, (ANRiN) project, observed that food security comes first while every other intervention is secondary.
In his welcome address, the Permanent Secretary, Kwara State Ministry of Agriculture, and Rural Development, TPL. Ishiaq Yinka Oloruko-oba explained that all hands must be on deck to ensure food security in the state.
He noted that nobody is safe when people are finding it difficult to feed themselves and their families.
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