By Michael Adesanya/Abeokuta
As ongoing new Permanent Voter Card (PVC) pre-registrations gathers momentum, The Alternative, a pan-Nigeria movement has took its advocacy and re-orientation programme to the farmers in Ogun State.
The movement also urged them to take part actively in the registrations ahead of the next election.
The convener of The Alternative, Otunba Segun Showunmi who spoke at an advocacy meeting in Abeokuta, the State capital with groups of farmers under the aegis of Agbe Gbe Lu Agro Network Limited, urged them to encourage their community members to register for the upcoming election.
Showunmi, who was represented by the Southwest Chairman of the Movement,Olusola Salau, described the farmers as a reliable group, expressing confidence that if empowered, there would be an increase of food production in the state.
He said “These people are not politicians, they are reliable when it comes to vote changes, although Otunba Showunmi is in PDP, he’s a brother to Prince Dapo Abiodun and Dapo Abiodun have gone to Brazil and knows the importance of farmers.
“So, we are calling on the governor to see this group as an important one that should be empowered. Give them equipment to do their work so there would be an increase in food in Ogun state”.
The Baale Agbe, Fohunola Ajani, revealed that politicians are the only beneficiaries of government empowerment.
He maintained that after receiving these farm machineries, they(politicians)sell them off leaving real farmers to cultivate with hoes and cutlasses.
A Septuagenarian and a farmer, Mr. Ojeyinka Bamidele, bemoaned the government’s emphasis on training women and youths while ignoring the elderly, who are also farmers.
According to Bamidele, many young people alter their career paths after obtaining these funds, training, and even equipment, thus urging the government to restructure its selection and grant distribution criteria.
According to him, “When they want to do training, they forget that those of us who are old are on the farm. They do training for youth and women, I wouldn’t say they should not continue to train the youth, but they should not forget those of us that are working, because many youth after receiving training, money and materials go away, but we are still on the farm”.
He said “When they want to give us loans or whatever, it’s those in the office that usually collect it. For those of us working in the farm, the condition they will give to us does not allow us to take the loan, so we want them to make sure that they make it easy for us to take loan”.
