‘Agric insurance, challenge of women farmers’

ActionAid Nigeria (AAN) has identified low level of awareness on how to access agricultural insurance services in Nigeria as part of the challenges faced by small-scale women farmers in the country.

This was disclosed by Halima Oiza Sadiq, Executive Director, Participation Initiative in Behavioural Change in Development (PIBCID), during a one-day stakeholders’ meeting organised by AAN at New Age Modern Hall, Lokoja.

According to the report, other challenges include lack of knowledge on how to access agro-insurance, non-involvement in its design and implementation, weak synergy between Nigeria Agricultural Insurance Cooperation (NAIC) and extension agencies, ministry of agriculture and the targeting of only elites/political farmers in the services.

The report equally lamented the poor government funding of yearly remittal of premium subsidy to NAIC as well as bank delays in remittal of farmers’ premium on time to NAIC.

Collaborating the report, Sadiq said there were inadequate number of staff in NAIC at the state level, stressing that the stringent conditions for agricultural insurance make access very difficult.

Other challenges associated with the policy include non-coverage of agricultural crops destroyed by cattle, poor publicity of NAIC activities, non-compensation by NAIC to women farmers who were insured and suffered losses, non-representation of women in Anchor Borrowers’ programme project management team, mostly for those that have accessed loans.

Speaking also ActionAid Programme Officer, Friday Ogezi, noted that some smallholder women farmers were not aware of their rights, saying that in most cases when they suffered losses, they were back to square one. He assured that the report would serve as a guide for these smallholder women farmers to have easy access to NAIC activities and services.