The All-Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN) has appealed to agricultural stakeholders to render adequate assistance to farmers affected by floods. President of the association, Sen. Abdullahi Adamu, made the appeal while fielding questions at a forum of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Sunday.
Adamu, who is also the Chairman, Board of Trustees of the National Agricultural Foundation of Nigeria, an NGO, said that the affected farmers needed all the help that could get to get back into business.
The president said that agricultural insurance would play an important role in achieving the goal, stressing that farmers were at this period, desperate to benefit from such a window. He, however, expressed dissatisfaction with the performance of the National Agricultural Insurance Corporation, saying that in over one decade of its establishment, it had not lived up to the expectation of farmers.
The president appealed to the corporation and other insurance companies to ensure the settlement of affected farmers. “ We hope they will sharpen the edges of their performance and other insurance companies will also cushion the situation. “And we do hope that they will be humane because now the issue of insurance will now come to the front burner.
“Experience has shown that each time you have this type of situation, people try to capitalise on it in the negative sense to exploit; we hope this will not be the case “We do hope that the national insurance company will advise government as to what can be done.’’
Sen. Adamu told NAN that stakeholders could also advise on ways the farmers could benefit from agricultural insurance. “Premiums can deliberately come down; government can decide to subsidise deliberately, because of the very special circumstances that the situation has brought to us.
“Some other measures that professionals in the practice of insurance can bring forth to bear, so that we can bring some relief as much as we can to those people that have been most affected by the disaster.’’
