PROTECTING WOMEN FARMERS IN NIGERIA: Policy Gaps Exposed by Flooding, High Fuel Costs and Fertilizer Scarcity ~ By Onyekachi Augustus Nwaozor, Ph.D
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When the water came last September, it did not knock.
In Kirikasamma, Jigawa State, 42-year-old Hadiza Ali woke at 2 a.m. to find brown water swallowing her half-hectare rice nursery. She grabbed her two children and a bag of seeds, wading through waist-high water to higher ground. When she returned three days later, nothing was left not the seedlings, not the small mud silo where she stored last season's grain, not the wooden marker that showed where her farm ended and her brother-in-law's began.
"I have farmed this land for 11 years, since my husband died. I lease it every year," Hadiza said, sitting on a mat in an IDP camp near Hadejia. "This year, I lost everything in one night. Government gave us one bag of rice for five people. No seeds. No fertilizer. How do I start again?"
Hadiza is one of an estimated 70% of smallholder farmers in Nigeria who are women and one of the most exposed to a triple crisis that experts say current agricultural policy was never designed to handle: catastrophic flooding, high fuel costs, and fertilizer scarcity.
Nigeria has a National Flood Emergency Preparedness and Response Plan. It has a National Agricultural Technology and Innovation Policy (NATIP) 2022-2027. What it does not have, critics say, is a policy that recognizes that a woman farmer in a floodplain is not the same as a male farmer with land title.
"The existing flood insurance and early warning systems are routed through landowners and recognized cooperatives, which are 85% male-headed," says Dr. Nnenna Okafor, agricultural economist at the University of Agriculture, Makurdi. "So when NIMET sends a flood alert, it goes to the chairman of the farmers association. The women who actually plant in the lowlands never get it."
In Bayelsa, 38-year-old Ebiere Jonah cultivates cassava and plantain on two plots in Yenagoa LGA. During the 2024 floods, she lost 1.5 hectares. Because she farms on family land belonging to her late husband's clan, without a formal title, she was automatically disqualified from the state government's flood compensation scheme that required proof of Certificate of Occupancy.
"I was told to bring my husband," she recalled. "I told them my husband has been dead since 2020."
The policy gap is stark: Compensation is tied to land ownership, not to cultivation. For women who access land through marriage, lease, or communal goodwill, that means total exclusion.
If flooding is the sudden shock, fuel price is the slow bleed.
Since the removal of fuel subsidy in 2023, the cost of transporting produce from farm to market has more than tripled. For women farmers, who typically farm smaller, more remote plots and depend on shared motorcycles or mini-buses, the impact is disproportionate.
Take Mary Ishaya, 55, a tomato farmer in Bokkos, Plateau State. In 2022, it cost her N3,000 to transport 10 baskets of tomatoes from her village to Jos market. In late 2025, the same trip cost N11,500.
"So I have two choices," she says. "Sell to the middleman in the village for half price, or spend all my profit on transport and come back with nothing. Last month I left three baskets to rot because I could not pay the bike."
NATIP promised subsidized rural transport and aggregation centers to reduce post-harvest loss, which stands at 40% for tomatoes. In Plateau, Benue, and Kaduna Nigeria's vegetable basket, less than 15% of those centers are functional, according to a 2025 audit by the Centre for Food and Agricultural Development. Most have no cold storage, no power, and no female managers, making them culturally inaccessible for many northern women.
"Policy talks about mechanization like tractors and harvesters. But for a woman with half a hectare, what she needs is a N5,000 transport voucher, a tricycle that women can ride, a storage sack that keeps tomatoes for two more days. That's not in the policy," Dr. Okafor argues.
The third leg of the crisis is fertilizer.
Nigeria's Presidential Fertilizer Initiative (PFI) was meant to make NPK 20-10-10 available at N15,000 per bag. On the open market in 2025/2026 farming season, it sells for between N38,000 and N45,000 in the north, and up to N52,000 in the southeast.
Even at the subsidized rate, access is skewed. Distribution is handled through state agricultural development programmes and large agro-dealers, who prefer to sell in bulk like 50 to 100 bags to male commercial farmers.
In Ebonyi State, 29-year-old Chinonso Okoro, leader of a 23-member women's cassava cooperative in Izzi LGA, describes the routine. "They tell us to come back tomorrow. We go every day for a week. Then they say fertilizer is finished. But if you see the big trucks loading for big men, you know it is not finished."
When the women did get fertilizer, they discovered it was adulterated mixed with sand. Their cassava yields dropped by 60%.
Forced to adapt, Chinonso's group has turned to what policy has ignored: local solutions. With training from an NGO, they now produce compost from poultry waste and rice husks and practice sack farming on raised platforms to avoid floods. Their yield is smaller, but they are no longer dependent on the government supply chain.
"Government calls us smallholder farmers. But we are not small. We feed the nation. We just need policy that sees us," she says.
What Needs to Change
Experts point to three glaring gaps:
1. From land-based to labor-based protection: Flood compensation, credit, and insurance must be tied to proof of farming photos, cooperative membership, extension officer verification not just land titles.
2. Gender-responsive input delivery: The Federal Ministry of Agriculture should earmark 40% of subsidized fertilizer and implement last-mile delivery through women's cooperatives, not just agro-dealers. Ebonyi's model of using female extension agents increased uptake by 33% in one pilot year.
3. Climate adaptation funds that reach the ground: Nigeria has access to over $400 million in climate adaptation funding. Less than 5% reaches women farmers. Earmarking transport vouchers, raised-bed farming kits, and solar dryers specifically for women-led farms would close the gap between policy and practice.
As the next rainy season approaches, Hadiza Ali in Jigawa is still waiting. She has saved N12,000 from selling firewood. It is not enough for a bag of fertilizer, let alone to lease land again.
"If they want to protect women farmers," she says, "they should ask us what we need. Not write policy in Abuja and bring it to us after the flood has gone."
