Abotokio Agro Village to get Borehole from IFAD/FGN/VCDP: How it began

On Saturday, the 12th of March, 2016, a group of five young graduates met at Abotokio, situates in Yewa North LGA of Ogun State, SouthWest Nigeria, to determine the future growth and development of their community – Ketuland — due to her neglects over the years by the Government; Ministerial and Departmental Agencies (MDAs) in the areas of socio-economic transformation at this era when the entire World is pursuing the Sustainable Development Goals.

The group came up with the idea of raising the standard of the area through the context of the social, economic, and environmental realities of the communities with the passion for Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development as the appropriate development strategy.

Abotokio Agro Village Farmers Association adopted Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development as a livelihood strategy with the aid of livelihood diversification, dialogue, participatory learning, training, research and of course, Participatory Action Research and extension process so as to improve the capacity of our dear people to create wealth, develop their social and natural capital, and empower them to influence policies that affect their livelihood and those of future generations.

Upon this background, the group formed Abotokio Agro Village Farmers Association, Abotokio (ABAGROVFA) via Ika Orile as a Farmers Organisation which is a Community-Based Organisation as focal points for linking and working with communities at the village level and initially funded by her members with personal and demonstration farms for ‘innovation-adoption’ and in future, for researches.

It is a model to be replicated thereafter to address the socio-economic transformation of the entire Ketuland and Yewa North in general with the following objectives:

1. To act as a medium of adopting agricultural skills, technologies or innovations from research stations, Universities, extension institutions, private bodies, donor agencies and Ministries of Agriculture, Forestry, Industry, Trade and Commerce as well as the  Ministries and Departmental Agencies for sustainable agricultural production and rural development.
2. To play a worthwhile and acceptable roles towards the stimulation of inclusive economic growth and livelihood diversification with the ultimate aim of reducing rural poverty and unemployment rates among the members.
3. To assists members to identify agricultural problems and initiate actions to solve their problems through trainings, workshops, symposium, fairs, Farmer to Farmers, Farmers Field Scholl and other appropriate participatory tools.
4. To allow membership participation in the agricultural projects initiated by the private or Government and Ministerial Departmental Agencies or International bodies that can lead to the sustainable food production, employment generation and poverty reduction.
5. To build the capacities of members and establish demonstration farms with adequate supports, accessible productive infrastructures and services that revolves around the areas of agriculture where members can acquire technical skills and advisory services from time to time.
6. To organize members into commodity groups in order to enable them to master the technical skills involved for better production and expertise.
7. To act as a medium in addressing social issues such as health, conflicts affecting sustainable agricultural production and rural development.
8. To involve rural youths and women of all ages and marital status in promoting sustainable agricultural production and rural development.
9. To enable members to have direct link with the agricultural input manufacturers, fabricators and suppliers so as to increase their production.
10. To continuously seek for external technical, advisory and financial (loans, credits, subsidies, grants, inputs) assistance to promote sustainable agriculture and rural development among her members.
11. To actively collaborate with all institutions, government, private or corporate bodies including the development agencies both within and outside Nigeria to execute agricultural projects in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
12. To address health issues affecting farmers productivity using appropriate intervention approaches such as health education, seeking for supports from the health institutions or donors.

Based on the need to be recognized as a small Farmers Organisation (FO) by the government and foreign development based agencies, the group registered the association with Yewa North Local Government, Ogun State in the year 2017 and was put under Ijoun Cluster due to her natural location.

Having been duly registered and certificated, the group members have participated in the various trainings under the IFAD/FGN/Ogun State -Value Chain Development Program (VCDP).

Such trainings include Gender Action Learning Systems (GALS) Methodology, Marketing Information System, Strategic Development Plan (ToTs), Entrepreneurship Development in Cassava and Rice Value Chains, Youths in Farm Mechanization etc.

The participants of such trainings scaled down each of the thematic trainings within and outside the association which have even added to the feathers of some of them as in the case of Mr. Asade who is a GALS Ambassador of the IFAD/FGN/Ogun State-VCDP.

IFAD/FGN/Ogun State-VCDP used Mr. Asade as a facilitator in Ogun State since then while our members are doing well in arable and permanent crop production. Kudos to the Ogun State Ministry of Agriculture, Ogun State Agricultural Development Pogramme, Abeokuta and the Department of Agriculture, Yewa North Local Government for this great feat.

In order to diversify the economic activities of dear people from the predominant crop production, the group through her bottom –up –approach consulted the group members in 2019 with keen debates and have adopted a stepwise development approach to adopt beekeeping, fish, grasscutter, poultry and other forms of livestock production into her development strategy in the order of priority hence we won a  beekeeping capacity building training support by Bees Abroad, UK in 2019 while the training is ongoing from start to finish.

The IFAD/FGN/OGUN STATE VCDP opportunity of getting a Solar Powered Borehole in 2024/25 will be an added advantage for our members, mostly the Women folks to be fully engaged in Cassava aggregation and Processing as well as Vegetables Gardening to reduce the level of unemployment and poverty in Ketuland of Yewaland, Ogun State, Nigeria.