President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the replication of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)’s Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (ABP) in 14 States following the success story of the scheme piloted by the Bank of Industry in Kebbi state. Mr Tobin Jonathan, Executive Director (Corporate Service) of the bank said this at a media parley organised by BoI in Lagos on Saturday while delivering a paper on “De-risking Agric Financing: A case study of NIRSAL and Kebbi Rice Programme.”
Jonathan who expressed appreciation of President’s concern about the huge foreign exchange spent by Nigeria importing food items that could be produced locally by lifting farmers’ financial capacity to produce more, said the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme, an initiative of the CBN was aimed at creating an ecosystem to link out-growers (small holder farmers) to local processors.
Rather than spend $11billion on food import into the country annually out of the overall $35 billion Africa spends yearly to import food, rice producing states such as Kebbi, Ebonyi, Cross Rivers, Kaduna, Lagos, Benue, Borno, Kano, Plateau, Niger, Taraba, Enugu Nasarawa, Kogi and Kwara could substantially benefit from the ASP for local farmers to increase production capacity.
It will be recalled that the CBN earmarked N40 billion for the project at single digit interest rate of nine per cent per annum for smallholder farmers. Tobin said that the CBN had Kebbi State as a pilot project with 78,000 farmers on the scheme while trying to reduce the food import bill of commodities that exert pressure on the nation’s foreign exchange. Tobin said that the apex bank adopted a strategy of encouraging local production in rice, wheat, fish and oil palm which were identified as top most on the import bill.
He said, “The CBN invited the governors of the 14 rice producing states and the executive directors of commercial banks but only the governor of Kebbi State, Alhaji Atiku Bagudu, showed interest after the meeting. If all the governors come on board, we will be able to meet the local demands; we will not be having the issue of buying a bag of rice at N18, 000. We need to grow our own rice so that we can eat fresh rice in the country but some of the governors are not taking the bull by the horn.”
Unfortunately, Nigerians consume around 5.5 million tonnes of rice, of which 3.6 million tonnes are locally produced, mostly by farmers for personal consumption.
“This figure also makes Nigeria the world’s largest importer of rice. So there is a genuine demand and genuine opportunities for entrepreneurs and businesses in Nigeria.”
He said the Governor of Kebbi State, Abubakar Bagudu could not go to Abuja without paying a visit to the bank to find more ways of helping his state farmers to improve their production. The Governor, he added, believed that sufficiency in rice production could make Nigeria a major exporter of rice to neighbouring West African countries.
“With the potential of the state in rice production and encouragement to farmers towards a high yield, Governor Bagudu wants other rice producing states to come together towards harnessing these potentials for maximum benefit.”
According to him, “The programme deals with farmers in cluster and trains them on current agronomical practices through extension workers. He said that the programme through various training had been able to change the mindset of farmers from seeing themselves as subsistence farmers to business owners’ striving for success.”
Tobin stressed that the ABP de-risked the farmers by ensuring compulsory insurance, release of funds in tranches, procurement of inputs and commencement of BVN capturing.
Lending his voice to Jonathan, the Acting Managing Director, Mr Waheed Olagunju, said that community-based industrialisation should be developed for the growth of nation’s economy. He said the country was naturally endowed with several commodities that could boost Nigeria’s competitiveness as a country.
According to him, “each state has at least one mineral or crop where it has comparative advantage, and which should be explored. The acting Managing Director said that could also help reduce the level of unemployment rate in the country. Olagunju said that there was also an urgent need for the nation to boost financial inclusion to achieve an inclusive growth.
He maintained that in achieving an inclusive growth, the grassroots had to be captured to boost products in the 774 local governments through the Nigerian Enterprise Development Programme (NEDEP). Olagunju said, “Nigeria is the only OPEC country that still exports crude oil, and non-oil products. There is an urgent need for us to go back to the roots instead of running about and looking for jobs.”
According to him, the loans under the GEEP programme will be disbursed through groups and clusters, which will encourage teamwork and more efficient utilization of scarce resources. He also encouraged entrepreneurs to begin and run their businesses based on character and integrity, and with the little financial and material resources they have at hand, before seeking for loans they may not have the capacity to manage at the time.
