Some Nigerian farmers have called on state governments to prioritise road infrastructure, especially the ones that connect the rural communities where large farmlands are located, saying poor road network has been discouraging them and plunging them into losses.
According to them, one of the greatest problems confronting rural farmers and communities in Nigeria is the absence of critical infrastructure such as ‘motorable’ roads, saying that the situation has been hindering market access for farmers in such communities.
While farmers who work assiduously to eke out a living from farming and also feed the nation are lamenting difficulties in transporting their produce to markets, Nigerians who are the consumers have been suffering the consequences through hike in prices of food items and other consumables.
As the nation continues to suffer low levels of agricultural productivity due to infrastructural deficit across the country, many farmers have resorted to growing only what they can eat or the extra they can carry on their heads to nearby markets due to the deplorable state of roads.
Findings by The Point revealed that most times, the surplus gets rotten in storage in the villages or during transit as a result of many hours or days spent in transporting the foodstuffs to where they are needed due to bad roads.
“The roads are bad; it takes me two to three days to transport my yam produce from Benue to Lagos. I lost more than 300 tubers of yam on my last trip to Mile 12 Market in Lagos because the trailer got spoiled on the road and my yam produce was stolen since the trailer slept on the road for a night. We yam farmers had to come together and assemble our produce for the trailer to convey them to cities for us and most times, we run into loss after the vehicle is stuck on the road,” a yam farmer in Benue State who identified himself as Stanley Arome said.
“There are times our yams get spoiled on the road; the sun will burn part of it even before we get to Lagos. This usually makes me sell cheaper than I was supposed to sell. If the roads were better, the goods would get to the market on time for me to sell without it getting spoiled,” he added.
This is the challenge most farmers in the rural communities face. Before the produce is transported out of the farm lands to places they can access roads to the market, most of the crops are lost in the process, especially the perishable crops. It also affects their ability to make contributions into the micro credit scheme like ajo and esusu. If this micro scheme is not done, it can affect their contribution to their household income and ability to buy inputs for the next planting season.
A poultry owner in Ibokun town of Osun State, who simply identified himself as Kingsley, said when the road is bad, those who sell chicken feed either close business or sell at higher prices.
“Now, when you go to Osogbo, you will buy a kilogram of chicken feed for N900, but the moment you move to Ibokun, it becomes N1, 100 and N1, 200. There was a time I made inquiries and my customers told me that the vehicles that transport the goods always get stranded on the road and if the owners discharge their goods to another vehicle, they will inflate the prices and the ripple effect is what we in the rural areas are suffering. So, it is high time our governments, especially state and local governments do something about making our roads passable for vehicles,” he said.
As this rainy season continues, many roads have become totally impassable after a few days of heavy rainfall cutting off some communities completely from being accessed. Even when commuters offer to pay higher fares, many commercial motorists refuse to go to such communities for fear that their vehicles would be trapped.
In an interview, an agricultural expert, Babajide Olagunju, described a good road network as a vital key to food production and movement chain, saying many hopes and dreams of famers have been dashed as a result of bad roads.
He said, “If you go to our villages and communities in rural areas, many of them use motorcycles to move their produce to the markets. The sad reality is that some roads are so terrible that motorcycles cannot even pass and in the case where it can pass, farmers are being discouraged on the quantity of farm produce they want to bring to the market.
“If a farmer has to use a motorcycle to move his produce to the farm, for instance, three different times depending on the distance of the market to the farm, it will negatively affect his profit. Many commercial motorists don’t even ply these communities with terrible roads. So, the few that struggle to stay in business among the farmers are not enjoying the difficulty.
“I must tell you that the urban dwellers are suffering this too and that is why they have to spend a large percentage of their income to buy food. This is because the food that gets to the cities is far more expensive than what the poor struggling farmers would have sold them. The high prices of these commodities are blamed on the middlemen, but they are also quick to point out that they incur huge costs transporting the food as a result of bad roads. So, our government needs to fix our rural roads.”
