With Boko Haram largely neutralised, the federal government, through the Fadama financing scheme, has provided farm inputs and food for Gombe State-based 2,680 persons displaced by the terror group. VINCENT OHONBAMU reports
The sting of the terror group is all but gone. After swooping on their villages, killing many of their relatives and forcing others to flee their homes, Boko Haram insurgents thought they had vanquished their victims. Indeed, they wreaked much havoc, but the displaced survivors have seen the table turn. The terrorists have been essentially neutralised, while the persons they displaced are being rehabilitated. In Gombe, the 2,680-strong IDPs community and their hosts have been given farm tools and other equipment including food items. The intervention, coming under the federal government’s Fadama III Additional Financing Programme, is to help the IDPs grow their food, put their lives together and get Boko Haram out of their minds. In modern parlance, the mediation is to empower them.
No fewer than 2,080 of the 2,680 IDPs and host community households identified in Gombe state currently benefit from the distribution of farm and non-farm inputs to the tune of N353,315,351.
Though a component of the Northeast Initiative aimed at rehabilitating and rebuilding the sub-region, this particular initiative is called Northeast Security and Livelihood Support Project.
It is meant to further stimulate and rekindle interest in agriculture while giving the Boko Haram victims a new lease of life. The gesture is equally extended to members of the host communities because the presence of the IDPs who were not included in government’s original plan for the population has strained and drained their lives.
Yakubu Ibn Muhammad, Communication Officer, Fadama III AF II Programme in Gombe said the aim of the project is to give the IDPs sustainable livelihood and make them self-reliant in their present locations, instead of continuing to give them food items, which is not sustainable.
However, the package comes with food items, which is sufficient to serve each household for at least two months. This is to encourage and sustain them as they wait for the harvest.
The Communication Officer said Fadama is intervening in four aspects of agriculture based on the needs and interests indicated by beneficiaries. He identified these areas as crop farming, fish farming, poultry farming and livestock breeding.
He said Fadama began by sensitising the host communities on the need to assist the IDPs with portions of land for farming activities and equally encouraged the IDPs to cultivate at least a half hectare of land.
The crop farmers were supported with quick maturing treated hybrid seeds of maize or rice, knapsack sprayers, and NPK and Urea brands of fertilisers while dry season farmers in addition got water pumps, water delivery hosts and suction pipes to suck water out of shallow water tables, where available.
Those with interest in fish farming were further categorised into two. The ones that fish in rivers were given fishing boats, nets, gears, hooks, baskets, harpoons, etc, while the ones that raise fish in ponds got fish fingerlings, feeds and medications among other necessities.
Poultry farmers got three weeks old chicks, feeds and medications while those into livestock breeding were given four small ruminants – either one he-goat/billy-goat and three she-goats or one ram and three sheep, depending on their choice. They were also given animal medications.
Ibn Mohammed said a household in Fadama work plan comprised five to 15 members while 40 households make up a community. The 2,680 households earmarked to benefits from Fadama III AF II programme are spread across 67 communities across Gombe State.
He said the Project started in the last quarters of 2016, but became disbursement effective on April 11, 2017 and never looked back from thence forth
Hajiya Habiba Mohammed, State Project Coordinator of the Fadama urged the staff of the agency to fast track the disbursement across the entire 11 local government areas of Gombe state as there is no time to waste
She said the first disbursement exercise went to 600 households in addition to ongoing one being extended to 2,080 households makes it a total of 2,680 benefitting households as captured in their plan.
Most of these communities have since planted and are looking forward to a bumper harvest. For those that were given small ruminants, the story is very encouraging,” she said.
A community leader, the Bala Waja, Alhaji Danjuma Mohammed Danjuma of Waja chiefdom commended the Fadama III AF project for positive impact on the lives of the people.
He commended the agency for carrying along the traditional rulers in the implementation of the project and advocated for sustainability of the project, which he said has been benefiting the rural populace, even before now.
Chairman of IDPs at Bajoga, headquarters of Funakaye local government area of Gombe state, Ali Yana who hails from Ajingin in Damboa LGA of Borno state said the intervention would go a long way in enhancing their quality of lives as IDPs.
‘These farm inputs are better for us because we can now have sustainable source of food; we appreciate President Muhammadu Buhari and the executing agency, Fadama for giving us a means of livelihood and a means towards self-reliance,” he said.
At Biri Bolawa in Nafada local government area, Chairman of the IDPs, Bappah Maidoya from Kagi in Benishek local government of Borno state thanked the providers of the intervention package and Fadama for ensuring that the materials reached the targeted beneficiaries.
He commended the Federal Government for the wonderful initiative intended to make their lives better and assured Fadama that they would make judicious use of the items.
He nevertheless expressed the yearning to return home, saying: “if peace is restored today, I would be on my way, except there’s no means of transportation. In that regards, we are urging the Federal Government to speed up the process of rebuilding our land”
Also anxious to go home is 27 years old Chairman of Sangaru IDPs Community from Jalam in Bauchi state. he had been a sweet potato farmer at home, but will now engage in rice farming. He said he would have to keep his items for the right time because dry season farming is where his interest and passion lie.
He is presently rewriting his school certificate exams with the intention of advancing to study medicine. He urges all IDPs, especially the younger ones to use what comes to the judiciously and keep on holding on to their dreams
For Aisha Bulama, a beneficiary from Talala, also at Ajigin in Damboa, Gombe state is home now. At over 60, there is no point going back home again said the widowed mother of five who lost her husband before the insurgency started.
She thanked all those that made the gesture possible and prayed for the quick recovery of President Buhari, even as she expressed confidence about good harvest at the end of the season, despite that the empowerment items seemed a little late on arrival.
An overwhelmed deaf and dumb, Sambo Ahmed Bajoga who witnessed the disbursement exercise at Bajoga wrote: My name is Sambo Ahmed Bajoga, I am appreciating you. I am a dumb and deaf person, so why don’t I get some?”
Fadama III AF is a tripartite project bankrolled mainly by the World Bank and Federal Government of Nigeria while the state government also provided some minimal fund.
