CHRICED lauds Kano govt’s distribution of fertilizers to
farmers
…Calls for a social protection policy and social register in Kano State
By Hussaini Ibrahim Sulaiman
The Resource Centre for Human Rights and Civic Education (CHRICED) applauds the Kano State Government for its commendable social intervention program, distributing one billion Naira worth of fertilizers to 52,800 smallholder farmers across the 44 local government areas of the state for free.
A statement by the Executive Director of the Centre, Comrade Ibrahim M. Zikirullahi, which was made available to the Triumph Newspaper, on Monday said the decision to procure another N5 billion worth of fertilizers to be sold at a subsidized rate is praiseworthy.
The statement reads: “The choice to source fertilizers from the state-owned Kano Agricultural Supply Company (KASCO) is a positive step towards creating job opportunities for the youth and keeping the funds within the state’s economy. These interventions are crucial, especially in light of the widespread hunger caused by the Federal government’s policies.
“As the father of the state, Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf is setting new records for citizen-focused interventions. In the last year, the Kano state government has made tackling poverty and inequality as central focus of its social protection program targeting women, people with disabilities, smallholders, farmers, and start-up businesses.”
“Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf has indicated that the transfer would run throughout his tenure to benefit women across Kano’s forty-four local government areas.
“The governor further flagged off the disbursement of five million naira to 43 entrepreneurs as start-up capital. There are indications of partnership talks with the government of Canada to roll out an initiative to transform the role of women in agriculture value chains in Kano State.”
According to Nigeria’s Multidimensional Poverty Index, in 2022, 63% or 133 million Nigerians were multidimensional poor, with the northern region recording 86 million poor people. According to the MPI, Kano has the largest absolute figure, at over 10 million.
The report also confirmed that poor people mostly reside in rural areas.
The current multidimensional poverty index in Kano state constitutes an emergency, and the recent interventions by the state government are timely. The various interventions offer reprieve and hope to indigent poor households. However, uncoordinated, one-off interventions are not likely to achieve a systemic reduction in poverty.
The governor and his team stand a better chance at systematically reducing poverty in the state by institutionalizing his social protection interventions. To achieve this, the governor must urgently consider working with civil society actors, development partners, and the state legislature to establish proper plans for a comprehensive, inclusive, and measurable Kano state social protection policy framework. Next, the state governor must immediately commence work to update and improve the integrity of the state’s social register and insist on using the register as the central data for targeting and distributing his social interventions.
A comprehensive social policy program will steer the entire Governor Yusuf-led administration in a predictable direction and help the governor achieve his full campaign promise to the good people of Kano state. Coupled with an inclusive social register, it would ensure that the most in need, identified as living in rural areas, are not left out of his vision to tackle poverty and make democracy work for people experiencing poverty.
The Triumph reports the state government has launched various initiatives including distributing empowerment packages to two thousand people with disabilities across the 44 LGAs, a N50,000 empowerment, package to 465 street hawkers in the Kano metropolis, and the distribution of N50,000 monthly cash transfers to indigent women in the state.
The absence of a social protection policy and a functional, trusted social register increases the risk of ‘politicization’ in the governor’s interventions. Therefore, it is in the governor’s best interest to prioritize a social protection policy for the state and invest in an open, transparent, credible social register as the state’s databank for social program planning and implementation.
We urge the government to prioritize transparency, accountability, equity, and distributive justice in the implementation of the numerous interventions recently embarked upon and to immediately
