BAUCHI – The Bauchi State Government said it had set up 78 fertiliser redemption centres to ease farmers’ access to the commodity this cropping season.
The Commissioner for Agricultural, Alhaji Isa Wabu, said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Bauchi, on Sunday.
Wabu said that the centres were more than the 20 established in 2012 and the 68 centres in 2013.
He said that the additional centres were created to ease the difficulties being experienced in accessing the commodity by the over 24,000 registered farmers in the state.
Wabu said that under the old arrangement, “even if 1,000 farmers were to access the commodity in one week, the authorities would spend 24 weeks to complete the exercise as against the eight weeks allocated under the GES programme.
“We, therefore, requested for additional 32 new redemption centres but the Federal Government only approved eight new centres.
“We are pleading with the Federal Government to allocate more centres considering the fact that the state has the highest number of registered farmers under the GES.”
Wabu also said that the state government had engaged the services of 22 fertiliser companies as against seven companies engaged in 2013 to ensure effective supply of the commodity across the 20 local government areas of the state
He said that 78 agro dealers had also been engaged by the state government to service the redemption centres while substantial quantity of the commodity had already been transported to all the centres.
Wabu said that a monitoring team had been set up to ensure effective monitoring of the sale of the commodity to farmers, to avert diversion.
The commissioner said that the state government would also not accept any bag of fertiliser less than 50kg, adding that the quality of the commodity must also be satisfied by agriculturalists.
He warned the supply companies against late delivery of the commodity to the designated redemption centres, adding that “any defaulting company will be de-listed from the arrangement”. (NAN)
