God answered our prayers for rain – Gombe farmers

Farmers in Gombe State have expressed gratitude to God for restoring rain to sustain farming activities in the state.

At the beginning of the rainy season, there was shortfall of rain in Akko, Billiri, Funakaye, Kaltungo and Yamaltu Deba local government areas of the state, which made farmers to resort to prayers for God’s intervention.

Farmers were initially worried that there might be drought in some of the affected areas, which may affect bumper harvest in the area.

However, when Daily Trust visited the affected LGAs on Tuesday, it was observed that rainfall has stabilised with crops flourising on the farms.

Our correspondent, who visited some farms in Akko and Yamaltu Deba local government areas, reports that the areas that were earlier affected by drought have now stabilized with the resumption of rainfall.

A resident of Lawanti village of Akko LGA, Malam Idris Lawanti, said they spent weeks without rain, “but now we believe things have returned to normal because even the crops that had begun to wilt have now revitalized since the rain stabilised about two weeks ago.”

In Deba, a farmer, Malam Yahaya Muhammad, said at the beginning of the rainy season, they were worried about drought which made them to become highly prayerful, but normalcy has since returned to the affected farms.

“The rain has stabilized and the crops are growing as expected, but our fear and concern is whether the long spell without rain will affect our yields during harvest,” he said.

When contacted on the possible effect of the dry spell on harvest, the Acting Programme Manager of the Gombe State Agricultural Development Programme (GSADP), Mr Sunday Lar, said the drought spell which was experienced at the beginning of the rainy season will have minimal impact on crop harvest.

Mr Lar told Daily Trust that the effect will not affect the expected bumper harvest as only little maize and millet were planted in the farms when the problem occurred.

“Though farms in some local government areas of the state were affected by rain shortfall at the beginning of the season, the damage will not have much negative effect on our crops, because very little was planted before the rainy season normalised,” he said.

The acting programme manager added that though there was a drought spell at the beginning of the rainy season in some areas, the effect was not close to the proportion reported in the media.