The State Commissioner for Agriculture and Natural resources, Professor Mohammed Gana Yisa made the appeal in Ilorin on Wednesday while briefing newsmen on the out-come of the State Executive Council meeting.  

Any farmer who fails to register during the enumeration exercise, the Commissioner explained, would be doing himself a great deal of disservice, adding that henceforth, only registered farmers would benefit from credit facility and other ancillary services.  

Prof. Yisa, who debunked the claim in some quarters that the census exercise would be used for taxation, said the exercise would be used purely for the distribution of farm imputes to the real farmers and planning purposes.  

According to him, the farmer’s enumeration exercise would enable the State government among other things, to collect relevant data for the purpose of planning for agricultural imputes such as fertilizer, tractors, insecticides and other agro-allied chemicals as well as knowing the strength and potentials of the farmers.  

On completion of the exercise, Yisa stated further, all farm imputes coming from the State Government would henceforth be distributed to farmers based on the data collated at the on-going enumeration, stressing that no non-farmer would then be able to benefit from such imputes. 

He, however, commended the Kwara State Government for being the first in the country to have embarked on the exercise, pointing out that the Federal Government was also planning a similar exercise.  

Earlier in his opening remarks, Commissioner for Information and Communications, Mr Ben Duntoye had disclosed that the newly upgraded and renovated Kaiama General Hospital would be commissioned next week Tuesday.  

The completion of the up-graded General Hospital, the Commissioner said, was in line with the State Government’s policy on health, adding that it will be equipped with State-of-the-heart medical equipment.    

Mas’ud Adebimpe

Chief Press Secretary to the Kwara State Governor    

8th October, 2009