By Ayobami Ife, Abeokuta
Senator Solomon Adeola (APC, Ogun West) has assured all duly qualified farmers that participated in his recent mega empowerment for farmers in Ogun State of receiving the promised N100,000 in addition to equipment and other farm inputs distributed during the programme.
Reacting to complaints and anonymous petitions of some farmers to his office, Senator Adeola stated that so far over 85% of bona fide farmers that legitimately participated in the programme and were entitled to the financial grants have since received their money.
He added that those with genuine claims and challenges relating to their bank accounts will be paid in the next few days once the errors in their accounts are corrected.
The senator stated that all the farmers that qualified for the payment went through a rigorous screening and certification process from their associations and clusters that included verification of their names, phone numbers, bank account details and were subsequently registered for three-day training leading to their names and details being included in the programme brochure as bona fide farmers and beneficiaries of financial grants.
“Only those whose names and details appeared in the programme indicating participation in the screening process are beneficiaries of the financial grants. Anyone on the programme list whose bank details is not correct or having challenges will be paid once the correction are sorted out. There are not many of such in any case,” the senator stated.
Senator Adeola said many of the farmers that turned out in their numbers on the empowerment day did not go through the screening and certification processes prior to the empowerment and were magnanimously given some farm inputs, but added that this set of farmers would not be entitled to the promised financial grants.
The senator who stated this in a release by Chief Kayode Odunaro, his media aide, said he was looking into the issue holistically with the federal government implementing agency making the payments.
He assured that all issues of payment of financial grants would be resolved in the next few days as efforts were ongoing to rectify accounts details and transactions of all bona fide beneficiaries.
