By Simpson Global Media News Desk
Small-scale women farmers in Jigawa State have called for increased government investment in agriculture and stronger measures to improve women’s access to farmland, saying budget commitments must translate into practical support that reaches farmers at community level.
The demand was made by the Jigawa State chapter of the Small-Scale Women Farmers Organisation in Nigeria, SWOFON, following findings from a budget-accountability assessment carried out with the International Budget Partnership, IBP.
The assessment examined agricultural budgeting, implementation and women farmers’ participation in public decision-making across Jigawa, Nasarawa, Niger, Anambra and Oyo states.
For Jigawa, the assessment found that agriculture accounted for an average of 6.58 per cent of approved state budgets between 2021 and 2025. SWOFON said that level remained below the 10 per cent agricultural investment benchmark associated with the African Union’s Malabo Declaration.
At the same time, the assessment found that Jigawa’s agricultural capital expenditure had an average execution rate of 65.9 per cent during the period reviewed.
The figures present a more complicated picture than a simple question of whether agricultural funding is rising or falling. They raise questions about the size of allocations, the extent to which approved funds are actually spent, the quality of implementation and whether farmers can identify tangible benefits from public expenditure.
SWOFON is therefore asking the Jigawa State Government to build on existing mechanisms for involving women farmers in the budget process while increasing agricultural allocations, improving land security and strengthening the monitoring of interventions.
A Fresh Focus on Who Receives Agricultural Support
The Jigawa development comes at a significant time for Nigeria’s agricultural sector, with renewed attention on food production, farmer productivity, irrigation, financing, climate resilience and the role of smallholder producers.
In Jigawa, the latest assessment places women farmers at the centre of one particular question: whether public agricultural spending is sufficiently connected to the needs of the people who produce, process and market food.
SWOFON’s findings indicate that Jigawa has established mechanisms through which women farmers can participate in discussions around public budgets.
According to the assessment, Jigawa was the only one of the five states studied where citizen input into the budget process had become a standing practice rather than something negotiated only during individual budget cycles.
The assessment also found that Jigawa was the only state among the five where priorities contained in SWOFON’s Women Farmers’ Charter of Demands could be traced to specific budget lines through a dedicated gender-budget segment covering areas including health, education and agriculture.
That finding is important because participation in budget discussions does not automatically mean that public resources are eventually delivered to intended beneficiaries.
The organisations involved in the assessment have consequently placed emphasis on the entire chain from participation to allocation, release, implementation and evidence of delivery.
The International Budget Partnership has previously described budget credibility as the degree to which governments actually implement their approved budgets, noting that gaps between approved spending and actual expenditure can affect the delivery of public services and development programmes.
For agricultural communities, the distinction can be particularly significant.
A budget may provide for irrigation equipment, farm inputs, processing machines, extension services or credit programmes. But if funds are delayed, if procurement is incomplete or if beneficiaries cannot access the intervention, the existence of the allocation alone does not increase farm productivity.
That is why the Jigawa assessment has called for stronger documentation of how agricultural interventions reach farmers.
Jigawa’s 6.58 Per Cent Agricultural Allocation
The central figure in the latest discussion is the 6.58 per cent average share of Jigawa’s approved budgets that went to agriculture between 2021 and 2025.
SWOFON says the figure is below the 10 per cent benchmark established under the African Union’s agricultural transformation commitments.
The 10 per cent benchmark is rooted in the continent’s long-running Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme process and the Maputo and Malabo commitments.
The African Union has described the 10 per cent public-expenditure target as part of the effort to mobilise domestic resources for agricultural transformation, alongside the goal of achieving sustained agricultural growth and improving food security.
The benchmark should not, however, be interpreted as evidence that every additional percentage point automatically produces a corresponding increase in food production.
Agriculture is influenced by many other factors, including rainfall, irrigation, land availability, input prices, access to credit, extension services, infrastructure, security, storage, transportation, market prices and the ability of farmers to process and sell what they produce.
The Jigawa assessment itself illustrates why allocation figures must be considered alongside implementation.
Although agriculture received an average of 6.58 per cent of approved budgets, agricultural capital expenditure recorded an average execution rate of 65.9 per cent during the period.
The assessment placed Jigawa second among the five states on that capital-execution measure, behind Nasarawa at 72.6 per cent. Niger recorded 44.4 per cent, Anambra 29.3 per cent and Oyo 17.5 per cent.
In other words, the discussion is not simply about how much money is budgeted.
It is also about whether approved money is converted into functioning infrastructure, equipment, services and opportunities for farmers.
The Land Question
For women farmers in Jigawa, the funding question is closely connected to another issue: access to land.
SWOFON identified customary land-tenure arrangements as a major constraint affecting women farmers.
The assessment found that access to land and ownership are not necessarily the same thing.
A farmer may be able to cultivate a piece of land without having secure, long-term control over it. That distinction matters when the farmer is considering investments such as irrigation, soil improvement, tree crops, permanent structures or other improvements that require confidence that the land will remain available.
The wider five-state assessment found that 84.9 per cent of surveyed SWOFON members reported some improvement in access to land, while 24.5 per cent said they did not own land.
SWOFON is therefore calling for future agricultural interventions involving land to include clearer documentation of beneficiary plots, tenure arrangements and mechanisms for resolving disputes.
The organisation also wants stronger connections between women farmers and government agricultural schemes, including farm settlements, irrigation programmes, the National Agricultural Land Development Authority and state land-allocation initiatives.
The issue has wider relevance.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations has made women’s land rights one of the major themes of the International Year of the Woman Farmer 2026.
The FAO says women farmers across agrifood systems continue to face gaps in access to and control over land, finance, technology, education and agricultural services. It also states that stronger land rights can improve women’s ability to invest, strengthen resilience and increase their bargaining power.
For Nigerian farmers, land security can determine whether an intervention becomes a short-term benefit or supports a longer agricultural enterprise.
A farmer who receives equipment but has uncertain access to farmland may have limited capacity to use that equipment over several seasons.
The same applies to irrigation.
A pump can increase production possibilities, but its value depends on access to land, water, fuel or electricity, maintenance services, appropriate crops and a market for the resulting harvest.
What Jigawa Has Already Put in Place
The latest assessment does not portray Jigawa’s agricultural system as having no support mechanisms.
Instead, it points to progress that SWOFON wants the state to consolidate.
The assessment found that Jigawa had the most systematically documented delivery of agricultural interventions to women farmers among the five states studied.
Documented interventions included water pumps, processing kilns and ₦50,000 grants.
The interventions were reported to have reached a SWOFON membership base of 13,680 women farmers, described by the assessment as the largest membership base among the five states.
But the assessment also identified an important information gap.
Jigawa had not yet calculated how widely those interventions had reached across the 13,680-member base.
That means there is a distinction between knowing that an intervention was distributed and knowing precisely how many farmers benefited, where they are located, what they received, whether the equipment remains functional and whether the intervention improved production or income.
That type of information is important for future budgeting.
If a pump programme reaches 1,000 farmers, for example, policymakers need to know whether those farmers are still using the pumps, whether the equipment is being maintained and whether the intervention has expanded cultivated areas or improved yields.
Likewise, if processing equipment is distributed, the impact cannot be fully assessed by counting machines alone.
Officials and communities need to know whether the machines are operating, what products are being processed, whether farmers can supply enough raw materials and whether finished products can reach profitable markets.
Beyond the Farm Gate
One of the strongest messages from the Jigawa assessment is that agricultural support cannot end when a farmer receives an input.
SWOFON and IBP identified storage, processing, transportation, market information and bargaining power as factors that can limit the economic returns from agricultural production.
This is especially important for smallholder farmers.
Producing more food does not automatically guarantee higher income if farmers are forced to sell immediately after harvest because they lack storage.
Likewise, a farmer may increase output but remain vulnerable if roads are poor, transport costs are high or buyers have greater bargaining power.
For perishable crops, the problem can become even more acute.
Without adequate processing or cold-storage facilities, farmers may have little choice but to sell quickly, even when market conditions are unfavourable.
The assessment therefore called for stronger links between women farmers and aggregation centres, processing facilities, storage infrastructure, market information systems, affordable transportation, financial services, institutional buyers and agricultural value chains.
That approach shifts the focus from production alone to the entire agricultural economy.
It also reflects the changing discussion around Nigerian agriculture, where policymakers and development partners increasingly emphasise value addition, processing, market access and commercialisation alongside farm-level production.
Why Budget Execution Matters
The 65.9 per cent average execution rate for Jigawa’s agricultural capital expenditure provides another important part of the story.
Budget execution is not simply a financial statistic.
In agriculture, it can influence whether a planned irrigation scheme is completed, whether farm roads are constructed, whether equipment is delivered before the planting season, whether extension services are available and whether processing facilities become operational.
Timing can be particularly important.
An agricultural intervention delivered after a planting window may have considerably less value than the same intervention delivered before farmers need it.
For example, improved seeds arriving after planting has begun may not help the farmers who needed them during that season.
Similarly, delayed fertiliser distribution, late machinery deployment or slow payment under a farming programme can reduce the practical effect of an otherwise approved policy.
The Jigawa assessment consequently recommends greater transparency around allocations, releases, expenditure, procurement status, physical delivery and beneficiary numbers.
Such reporting would allow farmers, civil society organisations and government agencies to determine not only what was budgeted, but what was actually delivered.
The 2026 Budget Context
Jigawa’s own budget documents provide evidence that agriculture remains part of the state’s development planning.
The state government’s budget portal currently publishes its 2026 approved estimates, citizens’ budget, budget implementation reports and other fiscal documents.
The state’s 2026 citizens’ budget-input document is also among the documents made publicly available through the government’s budget platform.
This creates an institutional basis for comparing public demands with approved allocations and subsequent implementation.
At the local-government level, agricultural programmes can also include specific provisions for women and young people.
For example, Jigawa’s published 2026 budget for Miga Local Government included an agriculture programme with a ₦20 million provision for youth and women in agriculture empowerment and smallholder agricultural credit strengthening. The same document also included allocations for crop value chains, food production and productivity, fisheries and other agricultural programmes.
The existence of such provisions does not by itself establish their eventual impact.
But it demonstrates how the broader question raised by SWOFON can be followed from state-level policy to specific budget lines.
The next stage is determining whether these allocations are released, implemented and experienced by farmers.
Women Farmers and Nigeria’s Food System
The Jigawa debate also comes during the United Nations’ International Year of the Woman Farmer.
FAO says the 2026 observance is intended to highlight women’s roles across agrifood systems, including production, processing and trade, while drawing attention to barriers involving land, finance, technical support, education and services.
Nigeria is participating in this broader conversation.
On September 16, FAO reported discussions in Nigeria involving the UN Resident Coordinator and the International Fund for Agricultural Development on strengthening collaboration and translating commitments to women farmers into investment and opportunities.
The timing gives the Jigawa findings additional context.
Women farmers are not a separate part of the food system operating outside mainstream agriculture. They are involved across production and value chains, but the extent to which public agricultural programmes reach them depends on the design of policies, budget structures, land arrangements and delivery systems.
For this reason, gender-responsive agricultural budgeting is increasingly being treated as an implementation issue rather than simply a question of representation.
If women’s priorities are identified during budget consultations but disappear before procurement or implementation, participation has limited practical effect.
If those priorities are included in specific budget lines and tracked through delivery, the process becomes more measurable.
That distinction is central to the Jigawa assessment.
From Consultation to Accountability
IBP’s involvement in the assessment reflects a wider effort to connect citizen participation with budget accountability.
The organisation has previously documented the challenges associated with budget credibility in Nigeria, including under-expenditure in agriculture.
Its research on Jigawa has also examined gaps between approved agricultural budgets and actual expenditure, particularly in areas such as infrastructure, agricultural supplies and development programmes.
The latest assessment is therefore part of a longer conversation about whether agricultural budgeting is producing the results promised in official plans.
For women farmers, accountability begins with being able to identify the intervention that was promised.
The next questions are straightforward but important:
How much was allocated?
Which ministry, department or agency is responsible?
How much money was released?
What was procured?
Where was it delivered?
How many farmers benefited?
Was the equipment functional?
Was the project completed?
And did it produce measurable improvements in production, processing, income or resilience?
These questions can help move agricultural accountability away from announcements and toward evidence.
The Malabo Benchmark and the Changing Agricultural Framework
The 10 per cent agricultural spending benchmark invoked by SWOFON originated in an earlier phase of African agricultural policy.
The Malabo Declaration committed African governments to accelerated agricultural transformation, including increased public investment in agriculture.
The African Union has since moved into a new phase of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme.
The AU says the Kampala CAADP Strategy and Action Plan for 2026–2035 was adopted by African Union leaders in January 2025, following concerns about slow progress under the previous Malabo targets.
This means the 10 per cent benchmark remains an important reference point in discussions about agricultural financing, but agricultural policy is now operating within a broader post-Malabo framework.
For Jigawa, the practical question remains local: how much of the state’s public resources should be directed toward agriculture, and how can those resources generate measurable benefits for farmers?
SWOFON’s argument is that moving closer to the benchmark should happen alongside better implementation and accountability.
That is significant because increasing an allocation without improving delivery could leave farmers facing many of the same constraints.
Irrigation and Climate Resilience
Jigawa’s agricultural economy also has to contend with environmental risks.
The state is heavily dependent on agriculture, including crops such as rice, wheat and sesame, and its development plans have placed emphasis on irrigation and dry-season production.
A recent report by the Voice of Nigeria said the Jigawa Government was expanding irrigation and dry-season farming while strengthening extension services and extending mobile veterinary services across the state’s 287 wards.
The importance of irrigation extends beyond increasing production.
It can also reduce dependence on increasingly uncertain rainfall patterns.
Across Nigeria, farmers have reported difficulties associated with unpredictable rainfall, prolonged dry periods and flooding.
Recent reporting from agricultural communities has highlighted concerns about disrupted planting calendars and crop losses associated with weather variability.
For women farmers, limited access to land and finance can make climate adaptation even more difficult.
The FAO’s International Year of the Woman Farmer materials specifically identify climate pressures alongside unequal access to land, capital, technology and services as challenges affecting women across agrifood systems.
This makes investment in irrigation, water management, improved seeds and extension services relevant to both agricultural productivity and resilience.
What SWOFON Wants Next
SWOFON’s recommendations extend beyond simply increasing the percentage of the budget allocated to agriculture.
The organisation wants the state to improve documentation of land-based interventions and strengthen women farmers’ links with agricultural settlements, irrigation schemes, land-allocation programmes and other public initiatives.
It also wants budget participation to be extended more systematically to local government level.
The organisation has called for regular accountability engagements between government and women farmers, together with public reporting on allocations, releases, expenditure, procurement status, physical delivery and beneficiary numbers.
It is also urging the state to move agricultural allocations toward the 10 per cent benchmark while maintaining the gender-responsive budget structure already identified in the assessment.
These proposals are designed to address two separate gaps.
The first is a resource gap: whether agriculture receives sufficient public investment.
The second is an implementation gap: whether farmers can verify where that investment goes and what it produces.
The Question of Measuring Results
One of the most consequential aspects of the Jigawa assessment is its emphasis on measurement.
Knowing that 13,680 women belong to a farmer organisation is useful.
Knowing how many of those women received pumps, grants or processing equipment is more useful.
Knowing whether those interventions increased production or income is more useful still.
That progression is at the heart of evidence-based agricultural policy.
For policymakers, reliable beneficiary data can reduce duplication and help identify underserved communities.
For farmers, transparent information can make it easier to understand eligibility and raise questions about missing interventions.
For civil society organisations, it creates a basis for monitoring public expenditure.
For government, it can provide evidence about which programmes are working and which need adjustment.
In a sector where agricultural conditions vary widely between communities, such information can also help policymakers design interventions around actual needs rather than broad assumptions.
A Broader Food-Security Issue
The Jigawa debate is ultimately larger than a single state budget.
Nigeria’s food-security challenge requires farmers to increase production while coping with high input costs, climate uncertainty, infrastructure limitations, market volatility and financing constraints.
Smallholder farmers remain an important part of that system.
Women farmers are particularly relevant because they operate across production, processing and trading activities, meaning agricultural policies that overlook their constraints can leave part of the food system under-supported.
The FAO has emphasised that closing gender gaps in access to land, finance, technology, education and decision-making can strengthen agricultural productivity, household welfare and resilience.
In that context, the Jigawa assessment offers a state-level example of how agricultural policy can be examined from the perspective of women who depend directly on the sector.
It also demonstrates why agricultural transformation cannot be measured solely by headline investment announcements.
The final test is what happens in farming communities.
What Happens Next
The immediate issue for Jigawa is whether the state government responds to SWOFON’s request for increased agricultural funding and improved land-access arrangements.
The state already has budget and implementation documents through which allocations and spending can be examined.
The challenge will be to connect those documents with evidence from farmers.
That means tracking agricultural projects from approval through implementation and determining whether intended beneficiaries actually receive the promised support.
It also means continuing dialogue between government agencies, farmer organisations, development partners and communities.
For women farmers, secure access to farmland, affordable financing, irrigation, extension services, equipment, storage, processing and markets are interconnected rather than isolated demands.
A pump without land may have limited value.
Land without financing may remain underutilised.
Higher production without storage may expose farmers to distress sales.
Processing equipment without reliable market access may remain idle.
And a budget allocation without timely implementation may not change conditions on the ground.
The Jigawa assessment therefore puts forward a broader interpretation of agricultural investment: public money must not only be allocated, but translated into functioning systems that allow farmers to produce, process, transport and sell food.
A Test for Agricultural Accountability
Jigawa’s reported 6.58 per cent average agricultural budget allocation between 2021 and 2025 falls below the 10 per cent benchmark cited by SWOFON, while the state’s 65.9 per cent average agricultural capital-expenditure execution rate shows that a substantial portion of planned capital spending was implemented during the period studied.
Those figures provide a starting point, not an endpoint.
The more important question is what the spending delivered.
The state’s reported progress in institutionalising women farmers’ participation in budgeting provides one mechanism through which that question can be pursued.
SWOFON’s assessment says women farmers’ priorities have been connected to specific budget lines in Jigawa, and that interventions such as pumps, processing kilns and grants have been documented.
The remaining challenge is to strengthen the evidence showing the scale, quality and impact of those interventions.
For a state where agriculture is central to livelihoods and food production, that information could influence future budget decisions.
It could also help determine whether agricultural spending is reaching the farmers who need it most and whether public programmes are removing, rather than reproducing, the structural barriers that limit women’s participation in agriculture.
The debate now moves beyond the size of the budget.
It is about whether public agricultural investment is sufficiently funded, properly executed, transparently tracked and connected to the realities of farmers.
For Jigawa’s women farmers, the message is clear: participation in the budget process has created an opening, but they are asking for that participation to be matched by funding, secure access to productive resources and measurable delivery.
As Nigeria continues to pursue higher food production and a more resilient agricultural economy, the experience of Jigawa illustrates why the strength of an agricultural policy may ultimately be judged not only by what governments announce or appropriate, but by what farmers can actually use on the land.
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