Smallholder Women Farmers Organisation in Nigeria (SWOFON) has raised the alarm over alleged moved by some person’s to launder stashed money through the agriculture sector.
They have, therefore, called on security agencies to beam their searchlight in the sector, particularly in the direction of wholesalers who have indicated interest in buying agricultural produce from women farmers even before harvest season.
National president, of SWOFON, Mary Afan, stated this at a media briefing organised by the International Budget Partnership (IBP), to show its strengthening public accountability for results and knowledge (SPARK) programme.
According to her, SWOFON had reason to believe that some persons were taking advantage of the naira redesign to launder money through agriculture as there had been a sudden increase in the number of those wanting to buy produce and in large quantities.
“We are noticing that there is an increased number of agricultural middlemen who are going into rural communities that cultivate tree crops such as cashew and oil palms, to pay for the harvest of such crops even before they are harvested.
“We suspect that these tactics by the middlemen is a way of pushing stolen and hoarded monies into the hands of our farmers who then take these monies to the banks for deposit.
“We, hereby, call on all relevant government agencies to swing into action in this regard so that our vulnerable women farmers will not continually fall prey in the hands of exploitative middlemen,” Afan stated.
She also expressed fears about food shortage in the country as according to her, the recent flooding in the country had led to the loss of livelihoods of many women, many of whom had lost the courage to start again.
Afan, therefore, called on the government to scale up interventions to meet the needs of the farmers so as to ensure food is available for Nigerians, adding that women make up 60 per cent of the agricultural labour force in the country.
“As a matter of urgency, we ask the government to begin to distribute improved seeds and seedlings to our members, procure farm input and equipment especially fertilisers and water pumps, and create an intervention fund to cushion the suffering of women farmers,” she added.
On her part, Imaobong Akpan, IBP’s senior programme officer, said the organisation’s SPARK project is committed to working with grassroots movements like SWOFON directly affected by service delivery failure.