987 farmers barred from obtaining farm inputs #nigeria

About 987 out of the 110, 000 small holder farmers who
registered under the Growth Empowerment Support (GES)
Touch and Pay pilot scheme in the Federal Capital Territory
(FCT) were prevented from getting farm inputs.
The agricultural inputs, which include fertilisers, seeds and
urea, were distributed to farmers via the GES-TAP
technology facilitated by the International Fertiliser
Development Centre (IFDC) in conjunction with Consult
Hyperion.
Zonal Coordinator of IFDC in AMAC/Bwari Area Council, Ms.
Patience Adamade, stated that the 987 farmers were denied
access due to complicities in their registration records.
She explained that some of the farmers might have
registered more than once, which would automatically
prevent the database from reflecting their identities.
Adamade however said efforts would be made to rectify the
problem.
"The farmers receiving inputs here today were registered
during the enumeration window and about 110, 000 of them
were captured. Any farmer with a TAP card is eligible to
redeem inputs from any of the centres where he is mapped
based on his or her ward. Each farmer is entitled to a 50kg
bag of NPK, 50kg bag of urea and either maize or rice.
"The GES/TAP issues cards to registered farmers during the
enumeration phase, and computer tablets were given to
agro-dealers prior the redemption exercise to facilitate the
process. We are not particular about you having a
farmland. It is open to anybody who wishes to start
farming," she said.
According Adamade, about 75 per cent of registered farmers
had redeemed their inputs while those that were yet to
claim theirs had been contacted by the centre.
"For the various wards mapped to a redemption centre, our
system tells us the percentage of farmers that have
redeemed their inputs in each of them. So for wards that
have not redeemed a good percentage, we have what we
call mobile redemption. We move our redemption centres to
those wards to enable them come out if proximity to the
centres is a challenge," she added.
Representative of Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural
Development, FCT Office, Mr. Maiyaki Madaki, said the new
GES/TAP technology was an improved method of
distributing inputs to farmers.