NRC empowers Plateau business women
In a bid to develop the state and give women access to housing, land, and property; stakeholders in Plateau State have asked that small scale farmers, especially women, be given quality seeds for planting.
They explained that this will bump up food production, and improve the people’s standard of living. They also mentioned the importance of officially document these policies to ensure their implementation.
These are some of the conclusions from the two-day workshop organized by the Norwegian Refugee Council. The Norwegian Refugee Council is an organisation working to rehabilitate internally displaced people affected by conflicts across the world. Their presence in Plateau State signifies the extent of the conflicts in the state.
The Country Advocacy Manager of NRC, Sabiu Shehu addressed the workshop attendees. “We are working on shelter, food security and livelihood, water, sanitation and hygiene, education, and protection from violence. We brought together stakeholders from the media organisations, government ministries, departments and agencies, academia, civil society organisations, and community members to discuss issues around agricultural seeds.
“We are talking about seed security, that is seed access, and availability because this will lead to having food security. We discussed effective seed policy and support to farmers to access seeds.” He said.
Sunday Ndaka, a staff of the State Ministry of Land, Survey and Town Planning, and a facilitator at the workshop spoke on the rights of women/girls. He said, “The custom and the tradition of this country does not allow the female gender, access to land and property of their fathers or their deceased husbands. It’s a very big challenge. We discovered that most times, women, after the demise of their husbands, have a lot of problems assessing their properties.
Some of them have been forced to marry the siblings of their late husbands to assess those properties. Nigeria has the Customary law and the Statutory law, but the Statutory law supersedes the customary law.
The landmark Supreme Court judgment has stated that women have rights to inherit property; either their husbands’ property or their fathers’ property.
In Plateau State, we have resistance and women also have challenges in accessing property after the demise of their husbands or their fathers but we have registration processes that enable women to inherit property when their husbands are no more,” Ndaka explained.
He went further, “We don’t just put ‘Mr’ but we mention the full names of the man and his wife so that when the man is no more, the wife can claim the property. Women should have access to property because they have a vital role in the family, household, and society. So, denying women these accesses is completely wrong. Women produce more food than men.
Farmers have had challenges accessing quality seeds on time hence the need to have policies in place to ensure farmers have access to seedlings and on time”, added Rita Yakal, another facilitator.
Beneficiaries of the NRC interventions were also present to share their success stories. Husseini Ismail, a herder, a worker at the Mararaba Ndere said, “There is the livelihood and food security aspect where the NRC assisted in the milk dairy production and distributed agricultural inputs for dry and rainy seasons farming. With their support, we now produce more litres of milk daily.”
Mary Dewi and Esther Monday, both of DTV recounted that the organization helped them to get the Certificate of Occupancy for their land, which they now use for farming and food production.
“Given our experience in our communities, following the violence, it is only God that will reward NRC and their team for coming to our rescue,” Esther stated.
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