By Nabilu Balarabe
Hadejia – The Sesame Farmers Association in Jigawa, on Thursday, said its members earned N19.78 billion from the export of 43,000 tonnes of sesame in 2018.
The Chairman of the association, Alhaji Yakubu Gwari, made the disclosure in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Hadejia.
He said each tonne of the commodity was sold for N460,000 during the year under review.
Gwari said that some Kano-based companies purchased the cash crop and exported it to Turkey, Singapore, Japan, Dubai, India and Malaysia.
He said that the association had registered more than 100 farmers, listing the major sesame producing areas in the state to include Hadejia, Mallamadori, Gujungu, Maigatari and Babura.
The chairman commended Gov. Muhammed Badaru for including sesame farmers in the state’s Clusters Support Programme.
“Under the programme, we received soft loans, 10 bags of fertiliser, eight bottles of herbicides and a spraying machine per hectare.
“You may be aware that 50 hectares were allocated to each of the 27 Local Government Areas in the state,” he said.
Gwari noted that the production capacity of sesame in the state could be doubled or even tripled with the Federal Government’s support.
“It worries me that the Federal Government pays more attention to rice farming as against sesame cultivation; this is wrong because sesame is now a money spinner.
“I am appealing to the Federal Government to expand the clusters from 50 hectares to between 80 and 100 hectares in every council.
“If this is done, I assure you we can increase our production capacity to about 80,000 tonnes annually because more inputs will be provided to farmers,” he said.