Wiifarm Woos New Members
Mr. Abdulazeem Abdulazeez is the General Secretary of Wiifarm Cooperatives Society. In this interview with Entrepreneur Excellence magazine, he discusses the opportunities available in his cooperatives and how the public can benefit.
Tell Us About Wiifarm Cooperatives Society
Wiifarm Cooperatives Society was inaugurated to share opportunities with its members in the agricultural sector. We have recognized that Nigerians have been locked down from numerous viable opportunities that exist in the agricultural sector of the economy; that’s why we have together a number of solutions to make those opportunities accessible to Nigerians.
What Opportunities Are We Talking About
We set out to partake in the agricultural sector of the Nigerian economy. Currently, we are most active in the rice sector. We have partnered with Integrated rice mill to procure rice paddy for milling and distribution in Lagos. We bring opportunities to our members in the form of participatory interest where they contribute to a fund and earn a return from the proceeds of the rice paddy purchase and milling operations under what we call the rice paddy aggregation programme.
What Are The Criteria For Membership
The process of becoming a member is so easy. Our membership fee is N1,000 and that entitles you to participate in our investment opportunities, earn from the returns of cooperatives and share from the annual surplus of the cooperatives.
Can We Consider This As An Investment Opportunity For Potential Members
As I have said earlier currently, our partnership is with a milling partner who is going to get rice paddy supply from us, mill and distribute through its distribution networks. The opportunity we bring to the people is just to express interest in this scheme because this is a cash-flow business. Cash flow in the sense that rice paddy goes to the mill, it comes out as edible rice. It goes to the distributors, money comes back, and everybody earns from the share of this process, and this continues to repeat itself. We have made participation in this scheme so easy, as easy as N10,000 per slot. We believe this is an easy entry point against the high ticket offering that is commonly found in the market. We promise our members a monthly return of 2% for 180 days after which their capital will be paid back to them.
What Inspired This Concept
The motivation behind creating Wiifarm Cooperatives is that we as a community can come together and put resources together and achieve things we might not achieve as individuals. There are a lot of opportunities in the Nigerian agricultural sector. We recognize these opportunities and we believe that together we can achieve great things. We can break down the barriers that are hindering people from getting access to opportunities in the agricultural space, and we have proven that by putting together this first initiative. This one will not be the first of its kind in our programmes come up in the future in other sub-sectors of the agric sector. We are not looking at only rice but other crops like cocoa, beans, palm oil, and many more, where there are numerous viable opportunities for people to benefit.
What Are Your Challenges
We have several challenges. Currently, we are still young and trying to bring the numbers together. We believe there’s no challenge that we cannot surmount. The moment we can bring many people, ideas and resources together as a community, we will be able to solve our problems.
What Problems Is Wiifarm Trying To Solve
We are trying to solve food sustainability problems in Nigeria. We believe that when we come together as a community, we can contribute to solving the huge gap in food insecurity and food sustainability in Nigeria. We believe we can build the huge amount of resources that is required to produce what Nigeria will eat and even for export. So, these are the values of Wiifarm Cooperatives. We pride ourselves on the value of community, self-help, and self-sustenance, and this is the bedrock of all the programmes we roll out and the activities we embark on.
What Encouragement Do You Need From Government
In most cases, Wiifarm Cooperatives is not looking directly at the government. We are looking directly to the Nigerians to come and join this laudable and viable initiative to ensure we gradually roll out our solutions. We believe that government cannot do everything for its citizens. The citizens also have the responsibility of coming together to innovatively solve their problems. So, we rather call on Nigerians to join hands with us to solve the food sustainability problem and, in the process, build sustenance for themselves.
