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International Women Day: Herdsmen invasion Threatening Female Farmers In Oyo — LAPDO
THE South West Coordinator, Life and Peace Development Organisation, LAPDO, Mrs. Rachael Ariori, yesterday, expressed worry that herdsmen invasion and insecurity have remained threats to the survival of women farmers in the Oke-Ogun area of Oyo State.
Ariori, who called for adequate compensation for all affected farmers, especially women, stated this while leading a delegation of LAPDO to the regional headquarters of Development Agenda for Western Nigeria, DAWN, Commission, in Ibadan, as part of activities lined up to commemorate this year’s International Women’s Day, IWD, themed ‘Break The Bias’.
LAPDO is being supported by the United States Agency for International Development, USAID.
She said: “We have cases whereby women farmers sourced loans to farm only for cows to ravage the farms. Such is devastating and tragic. Worse still, there are no forms of compensation to such victims, while the government has continued to pay lip service to the issue of insecurity.
As an Inclusive Agricultural Cluster, our discovery over the years has been that the challenges facing women farmers in the state are enormous including lack of finance, absence of farm equipment and agric input which are the fallout of detached attitude of the government to the plight of women farmers and lack of financial support for them.
“What has become the order of the day is that the enabling environment is not there for smallholder women farmers to survive. Since there are no tractors or equipment to work within the state, they have to travel out of the state to rent such. The same applies to chemicals and other agro-inputs which they travel as far as Ibadan to buy.
To redress the trend and break the barrier and the bias in line with this year’s IWD campaign, we are calling on the government to, among others, create a robust policy environment in the agricultural sector that will support the empowerment needs of smallholder women farmers including those living with disabilities.
“It is also imperative for Oyo State Government to have a dedicated budget line that focuses on empowering smallholder women farmers to add values to their produce.”
Responding, the Director-General of the DAWN Commission, Mr Seye Oyeleye, said agriculture was the drive of the economy of the region in the 1950s before the discovery of crude oil.
