WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2010-11-30 Time: 07:00:05 Posted By: News Poster
By Tina A. Hassan
The quest for food security may be a genuine dream of the Nigerian government but what might have gone wrong could be in the area of execution or implementation of policies, as it is often said.
In the past years, government has introduced several food security programmes to this end and as each programme is phased out and replaced by another, it is difficult to say if they made significant impact on the lives of Nigerians in terms of food availability because of the persistent rise in food scarcity and demand in the country.
Operation Feed the Nation (OFN) is one of such popular food security projects that the military government introduced between 1976 to 1980 to boost agriculture in general through increased local food production and a reduction in importation of food.
Other current food projects like the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) that has been fully adopted by Nigeria is yet to yield meaningful result and contribute to ensuring food security not only in Nigeria but in Africa as well, even as hunger crisis continue to grow in most regions of the continent.
In the 1990’s, government introduced the National Fadama Development Project under a World Bank financing and over the years, Fadama has grown to include the active participation of farmers as counterpart funders of the programme which has been replicated because of its level of success among rural communities
With the sole target of reducing rural poverty in the country through improved food production that would boost farmers income and improve their living status, the programme was segmented to Fadama I, II and III.
As an initiative of the World Bank in partnership with the Federal Government, the programme aims to empower the economic status of local farmers by involving them in various agricultural ventures of their choice through a participatory approach.
The Fadama programme has been acclaimed one of the most successful food security programmes in Nigeria in terms of implementation because the farmers are completely involved in the funding and implementation processes through a counterpart funding system, thereby giving them a sense of responsibility and ownership.
Mr. Tunde Aremu, the Policy advocacy and Campaigns Officer of ActionAid Nigeria said the fadama programme has been acclaimed a success by most farmers but if it were to be handled by the government alone without the world bank, it would not have recorded as much success as it does now.
“From feelers we got from local farmers, the concept is fine and the farmers believe it can work for them. But the challenge is at the level of effective implementation because we discover that sometimes the connection with local farmers is weak and some of them are not able to access farm inputs like fertilizer, pesticides and herbicides, we however appreciate the effort the programme coordinator is making in ensuring that these issues are addressed,’ he added.
He called the Federal Government and other participating organizations to ensure that Community Based Organizations (CBOs) are involved in the project because the project is not yet where it should be. With the farmers contributing a certain percentage of the money invested in the project, they know that they cannot allow the project to fail because their investment will be affected as well.
Fadama III, which is the latest version of the project has recently been adjudge one of the most effective rural target agriculture projects to be managed by the Word Bank in Africa especially in the area of project coordination, capacity building and management. However, observers are of the view that Nigeria is unable to effectively coordinate an agriculture project without assistance from international bodies like the world bank or the Africa Development Bank.
A major threat to the sustenance of successes recorded in Fadama programme is the inability of government to provide agriculture infrastructures in the rural areas and the persistent delays in the distribution of farming inputs such as fertilizer, others have observed.
“Farmers in some of the Fadama states are not particularly happy with the level of implementation of the programme despite the contributions they make to it,” says Constance Alabi of ActionAid Nigeria.
According to her, the programme is a good one and is actually working in some states but effective and proper management would help impact more on the farmers in terms of the overall benefit. She observed that farm inputs such as fertilizers are slow in reaching most farmers in addition to lack of infrastructures and this is an unhealthy trend that may affect the project.
At a meeting on food security mapping for Nigeria held in the United nations house in Nigeria recently, National Project Coordinator of Fadama III project, Dr. Bukar Tijani said Fadama has yielded a lot of benefits to participating farmers because it is fully supervised and coordinated effectively despite the challenges of funding and poor record keeping by some of the team coordinators.
“We targets small holder farmers in very remote rural dwellings and registers them to participate in any agriculture venture of their choice ranging from crop to animal production among others,” he said.
The project was carried out in three phases, Fadama I was more like a trial while Fadama II and III was evolved to enable more local farmers benefit from the project. Chief Esther Whegbere is one of the participating farmers of Fadama in Delta State who says the pace of work has been slow but on the overall, farmers in her Fadama Community Association (FCA), Whekpo rice farmers, have benefited from the project. Another farmer who practices fish farming under the project, Mr. Michael Ekuewuhroma said the programme has helped a lot of farmers to grow financially.
Original Source: 
Original date published: 30 November 2010
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201011300242.html?viewall=1