The All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN) has honoured the Yobe State Governor, Mai Mala Buni, with special award and also named him the best Governor in 2025, for empowering 5,350 farmers with agricultural implements.

According to the national farmers union, the gesture is borne out of the Governor’s unprecedented agricultural interventions programmes in the 2024 and 2025 fiscal years.

Presenting the twin awards in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), AFAN’s Deputy President, Nuhu Baba Hassan said: “The awards are in recognition of Governor Buni’s outstanding commitment to agricultural development for national food security, livelihoods of farmers, and the prosperity of agricultural production in the state.

While congratulating the governor for the awards, Hassan urged him to continue supporting agricultural development programmes, in order to remain a role model for the other 35 governors in the country.

Highlighting the significance of the awards, he further revealed: “Under the 2024 and 2025 farmers agricultural programmes, 5,350 farmers were empowered with agricultural inputs, including tractors, harvesters, and improved seeds worth N15.3b.

“Your administration in partnership with the World Bank project in 2025 disbursed $2.5m (N18.75b) of agricultural inputs, including solar-powered irrigation pumps, hand-held land tillers and fertilisers to 101 farmers’ associations across the state.”

He noted that the farmers’ agricultural empowerment programmes in the last two years have crashed the market food prices of rice, beans, maize, millet, potatoes and vegetables by approximately 45 per cent.

The Deputy President, however, lamented that the market prices of a gallon of cooking oil and a crate of eggs has remained high at N17,000 and N6,000 respectively, despite the efforts of the Buni’s administration to crash market food prices with the massive production of agricultural products and livestock in the Kumadugu/Yobe River Basin.