LOKOJA – An NGO, Participation Initiative for Behavioural Change In Development says that the Kogi State Economic Literacy for Budget Accountability and Good Governance (ELBAG) programme has organised over 60,000 women farmers into a group.
Mr Victor Adejoh, the Executive Director of the organisation made this known at a meeting with the ELBAG group in Lokoja on Wednesday.
Adejoh said that the group was formed to facilitate the access of its members to agricultural inputs under the state’s Agricultural Transformation Agenda.
He said that the women, drawn from various cooperative groups, were brought together to establish the Small-Scale Women Farmers Organisation of Nigeria (SSWFON).
He said that ELBAG would ensure that the farmers benefited from hybrid seedlings and agricultural inputs to ensure food and economic security of women farmers in the state.
On the activities of ELBAG , the executive director said it was in the business of training and educating people at the grassroots on good governance and transparency in the execution of government projects.
He said that the group worked closely with government to implement its policies and to ensure that immediate and pressing needs of the people were captured and executed in both the state and local governments’ annual budgets.
Also speaking, Mr Gerald Mataga, the Chairman of ELBAG, said that the organisation was working to ensure that the needs of the people were captured in budgets.
Mataga expressed regret that the budgeting process and implementation were often done without public consultation and inputs, adding that the practice often resulted in misplaced priorities.
In a remark, the state Coordinator of SSWFON, Mrs Ketim Ocheja, said that the organisation was working hard to mobilise rural women to participate and benefit from the agricultural initiatives of the state government.
This, she said, would go a long way in alleviating the sufferings of the rural women in the state. (NAN)
