Attitude of Farmers towards Cost-Sharing in the Second National Fadama Development Project (NFDP-II): The Case of Kogi State of Nigeria

Abstract

This paper highlights the attitude of farmers towards the Second National Fadama Development Project (NFDP-II) implementation at the local level in Nigeria. The fadama II project focuses on government – farmer partnerships in the funding of agricultural enterprises with the aim of achieving sustainable and stable funding for agricultural development. The sample for the study was made up of male and female Fadama beneficiaries selected through multistage sampling from the fadama resource users groups (FRUGs) in Lokoja and Idah LGAs of Kogi State. The findings indicated that the majority (51.5%) of the respondents were in their productive years. The results show that the majority of the farmers had favourable attitude towards cost – sharing of the fadama II programme. However, the level of farmers' participation in the planning, implementation and monitoring activities were very low except in the areas of financial management, maintenance of fadama investments and proffering conflict mitigation measures. The findings further indicates that late disbursement of funds from the African Development Bank (ADB), difficulty in collecting money from some farmers/high cost of administration, insufficient credit availability and the tendency of highly placed individuals/politicians to hijack the programme by registering personal resource user groups (FRUGs)/fadama community associations (FCAs) were problems militating against the effective implementation of the project. The study concludes that there is great need to specifically target vulnerable sub-groups such as widows, the elderly, castes and marginal fadama users through an inclusive participatory planning process to avoid situations of elite capture and conflicts in the on-going Fadama III project.