[OPINION] Lagos and Rural Community Inclusiveness

The need to go deep into the rural communities to tackle poverty, hunger and malnutrition, rural joblessness that may lead to crime and rural-urban drift has gained focal attention of the Lagos State Government through the Ministry of Local Government and Community Affairs, in ensuring improved quality of lives of rural dwellers and other community residents in the state.

The ministry as a frontliner on “security and good governance” on the famous T. H. E. M. E. S. agenda of the state government implements solutions and improvements to the identified critical, societal challenges through core departments of community agriculture and community development. These two departments with the support of two other allies; the technical service department, and monitoring and inspection department complement the leadership chain which begun from strategic to tactical, by adding value to the policies of the state government through different efforts at enhancing food sufficiency and community empowerment for residents of Lagos State.

Certainly, the food that everyone eats comes from rural communities. In the same way, the difference between rural areas and urban centres is poverty culminating in the absence of basic social amenities. Thus, without food, no one can survive. Also, there is no way a serious and responsive government can achieve “security and good governance”, two hallmarks of accountable democracy in isolation of the rural communities.

With Lagos’ increasing population everyday, it is unputdownable to say that the state government has not effectively guaranteed the survival of the state against the incidence of unpredictable violence that has become a national scourge in the nation’s polity because the operational leadership in the ministry is also doing its best to ensure that the state government’s funding and policymaking are felt across the various communities in the state.

The most pronounced achievement of the state government today, in ensuring that the community voice is heard regularly in the scheme of things, is the making of the Ministry of Local Government and Community Affairs as a ground for knowing the community feelings, wishes and aspirations. By this design, the state government’s increased interaction with residents in the communities has yielded graciously in the quantum of empowerment that the government had invested in several people and communities.

Talking about community agriculture as a major policy of the government, having the consciousness that most rural people are peasant farmers and they survived on subsistence farming raised the fundamental concern about the need to enhance their productivity and income to reduce the leading economic indices of hunger, inequality and unemployment in any development. According to the statistics, the state also contains more than five hundred riverine communities, and capacity building of some selected artisanal fishermen and women have been part of the efforts to increase the quantity and quality of seafood at affordable prices.

So far, the following efforts have been made by the state government to enhance food production and its sufficiency through the peasant farmers. The state government through the ministry in some selected riverine areas had provided modern smoking kilns, weighing scales, sealing machines, holding tanks, water reservoirs, cooling racks, collapsible ponds, fish pond platforms, plumbing materials and insulations, scaffolds, fish juveniles and fish feeds to some selected farmers in Ikorodu, Epe, Badagry and Lagos Island division of the state, including the distribution of bio-fortified seedlings to farmers across the state to improve farm produce and nutrition.

Also, the centre for rural development, an agency in the ministry has been training the youths in the rural areas in bees farming, honeybees collection and management, alongside fish breeding, management and computer literacy in the last few years. Due to the centre’s improvement and the urgency to expand the need for honeybees collection and its benefits for socio-economic development, the state government over a year now had approved the acquisition of fifty new beehives for the centre. Recently, the centre trained one hundred additional youths in apiary.

In May 2021, the state government through the ministry partners with the world bank through FADAMA, its pet project in Nigeria to discuss how to mitigate the hardship of covid-19 on food security. Under the scheme, heads of the department for agriculture at the council level across the state including designated desk officers of this department were sensitized at a three-day parley held at the state secretariat. The take-home of the interactive seminar was about how the council personnel could stimulate the interest of pure peasant farmers into poultry, pigs and other specified areas in their various communities through the formation of ten groups in each rural community, with each group made up of ten people comprising forty percent of women and youth.

Majorly, the ministry as created and restructured to facilitate the continuous relationship of people with the state government boast of three established demonstration and training centres meant to equip the capacity of these agricultural officers and residents in the state to enhance and sustain food security in the state including granting access to students on excursions.

The activities of the training centres are: integrated agricultural farm centre at Isheri with multipurpose activities for open-field vegetable production, greenhouse for growing different species of pepper, poultry section and aquaculture where waste are also converted to other uses; cattle breeding centre at Ilogbo- Eremi, Badagry for cross-breeding of cattle and the hatchery centre in Marina for the production of fingernails.

The state government through the ministry delivered the mandate on food and nutrition programme as established by the National Council for Food and Nutrition to the participants at the parley, so that they could understand the importance of community agriculture and how they need to recruit farmers to enhance sustainable food security in the Lagos.

Some of the deliverables of the ministry are: to provide agricultural support to community farmers; regularly introduce the latest technology to farmers; planting inputs multiplication; capacity building and training for agricultural officers at the Council level; to ensure that farmers are linked with agricultural organisations; to link local farmers to sources of markets and loan facilities among others. All these intervention activities are geared towards the fighting of malnutrition in the state by increasing the growth of quality food and nutrition.

The implication of complementing the growth in community agriculture dovetails in the need to provide social amenities that can empower residents in rural areas to feel comfortable and at par with people in the towns and cities. The state government has opened and widen many rural roads including a network of roads to ease the transportation of farm produce, the attraction of more people from urban areas to rural communities, and these incidents have resulted in the expansion of markets and increased incomes for farmers and people in the agricultural-value-chain.

In the same wise, many rural communities in partnership with the state government have been enjoying regular electrification, solar energy, small and medium water scheme, good drainage, recreation centres, community halls, upgrade of healthcare centres, all in the overall interest of ensuring an improved quality of lives for all citizens in the state. Precisely, twenty-one micro water projects have been delivered to some communities, while thirty-five others are near completion.

A good example is a very remote area called Iganke along Itoikin road in Epe local government area that has benefited from a 1.7-kilometre access road and some other network of roads in Ikorodu axis of the state. Last year, the state government approved more than forty-two transformers to CDAs and they were delivered in batches across four divisions, except for one division awaiting delivery. So far, it has been so good.

If the state government has not involved community inclusiveness as an ardent issue deserving good attention and care in the statewide development agenda, no doubt, the acute shortage of food and high cost of foodstuff that hit the country till now would have been monumental on the survival of its residents. As of November 2020, the state mobilized over four thousand registered community development associations (CDAs) and their self-help project achievements got a grand celebration from the state government. Yet, the state government is not relenting.

Nevertheless, more effort at creating enabling environment that can identify more serious people in the rural areas and with funds assistance and training would induce more residents to cultivate a deep interest in agriculture as a business enterprise. Making agriculture a business enterprise for most rural residents in the state is the way to go bumper harvesting, and should be matched with an aggressive crusade into all rural communities in the state to march the demand of an increasing population, and to increase agriculture contribution to the gross domestic product of our economy. The availability and affordability of quality foods must be first and foremost, a primary goal of government to strengthen public health and safety of all citizens.

*Reuben Hopo* is a Public Affairs Officer, Ministry of Local Government and Community Affairs, Alausa, Lagos.