{"id":66539,"date":"2025-05-26T11:21:07","date_gmt":"2025-05-26T11:21:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=66539"},"modified":"2025-05-26T11:21:07","modified_gmt":"2025-05-26T11:21:07","slug":"gombe-promises-fresh-deal-for-women-farmers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/05\/26\/gombe-promises-fresh-deal-for-women-farmers\/","title":{"rendered":"Gombe Promises Fresh Deal for Women Farmers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Huldah Shado<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Gombe State Commissioner for Agriculture, Dr Barnabas Malle, has pledged full support for the Small Scale Women Farmers Organisation of Nigeria (SWOFON), assuring them of a transparent and productive partnership aimed at unlocking their full potential.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Malle gave the assurance on Friday during a courtesy visit to his office by representatives of SWOFON and the Budget Committee Group (BCG).<\/p>\n<p>The visit, facilitated by Hope Foundation for the Lonely with support from ActionAid Nigeria, focused on promoting inclusive agricultural budgeting and accountability.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The ministry is open for partnership. We will support you to grow and access what is rightly yours,&#8221; Dr Malle stated, emphasizing his commitment to empowering women farmers and addressing their concerns.<\/p>\n<p>Responding to issues of delayed or withheld funds, the commissioner said he was unaware of such occurrences but assured the group of transparency moving forward.<\/p>\n<p>Ephraim Samuel, Secretary of the BCG, presented an analysis of the 2025 Agriculture Budget.<\/p>\n<p>He highlighted a drop in allocation for smallholder women farmers from N50 million in 2024 to N30 million in 2025.<\/p>\n<p>He also raised concerns over the removal of the N100 million previously allocated for mechanisation, which was never released in 2024.<\/p>\n<p>The analysis welcomed the rise in funding for agricultural extension services from N5 million to N40 million in 2025, specifically for mobility and communication tools.<\/p>\n<p>However, it flagged the absence of funding for training or recruitment of extension agents.<\/p>\n<p>In his presentation, BCG Chairman Chima Azubuike urged the Gombe State Government to raise agricultural funding to meet the 10 percent Maputo Declaration target.<\/p>\n<p>He called for the reinstatement of crucial budget lines for mechanisation and climate<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Huldah Shado The Gombe State Commissioner for Agriculture, Dr Barnabas Malle, has pledged full support for the Small Scale Women Farmers Organisation of Nigeria (SWOFON), assuring them of a transparent and productive partnership aimed at unlocking their full potential. Dr Malle gave the assurance on Friday during a courtesy visit to his office by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":66540,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[1716],"class_list":["post-66539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-treasured"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66539"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66541,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66539\/revisions\/66541"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}