Women and smallholder farmers in rural communities across Kwara State have berated the performance of the Federal Government’s Growth Enhancement Support Scheme (GESS) for farmers in 2014 as poor.

The assessment was contained in a score-card presented in Ilorin at the “Dissemination of Community Participatory Assessment on Government Expenditure on Agriculture and Score-Card on Growth Enhancement Support Scheme (GESS) 2014”.

The programme, which was convened by the Centre for Community Empowerment and Poverty Eradication, (CCEPE), a partner of the Actionaid Nigeria, drew women farmers from such rural communities as Asa, Kaiama, Ilorin East, among other areas across the state.

The Senior Programme Officer of the NGO, Mr Abdulrahaman Ayuba stated that the real smallholder farmers were still left out of the scheme as many registered farmers could not get their input like seedlings and fertilisers coupled with inconsistency in input redemption year after year.

Ayuba added that the performance of the scheme dropped in Kwara State from average level in 2013 to poor level in 2014.

The report also stated that less than one per cent of the annual agriculture budget allocation and expenditure on finance and credit was available to the rural farmers and co-operative societies in 2014.

It also bemoaned what it described as non-existence of extension services to the smallholder farmers in the rural communities.

The report, however, advocated a review and continuation of the GESS programme to serve as a pro-active measure considering the danger of its being discontinued by the new regime.

The report also recommended that the department of agriculture in the local government should be integrated into the process to improve farmers’ registration and continually generate needed data on the performance, among others.

Reacting to the report, a former Director, Extension Service in the Kwara State Agriculture Development Project (KWADP), Mr Oloruntoba Joseph debunked the claim that farmers had never come across extension agents before.

He, however, admitted that the number of extension agents were fewer due to retirement and resignation compared to the number which the KWADP had few years ago.

Joseph also noted that smallholder farmers could not access credit facility because many farmers had misused the opportunity available to them in the past by diverting the money.

Also speaking, the acting State Director, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Mr Raphael Adeponle, advised farmers to see agriculture as a business, adding that farmers had seen money given to support them as largesse and did not bother to pay back credit facility.

Adeponle, however said that he had noted all the observation raised in the score-card and would report to the appropriate quarters.