The Executive Director, Bank of Agriculture (BOA) Limited, Mr. Olabode Abikoye |
The
Executive Director, Bank of Agriculture (BOA) Limited, Mr. Olabode Abikoye has
expressed that the Federal Government’s fund injection into commercial banks
for onward lending to farmers may not really proffer solution to finance challenges
of farmers saying government cannot continue putting money for the purpose of
lending, but rather the farmers should engage in saving and lending to do
farming business.
Mr. Abikoye’s position was coming on the heels
of farmers’ request at the 1st
NACCIMA Annual Agribusiness & Policy Conference held in Abuja where
the Federal Government
(FG) was being asked to ensure fund release through recapitalization of BOA in
order to assist farming loan, pointed that the demand may not conform to
banking processes and operation of saving and loaning to customers.
The BOA ED
opposed the position of farmers who believed that the bank recapitalization was
an access to lending, stressed the principle of saving and lending would still
be upheld for the recovery of any loan to farmers.
Abikoye
advised that farmers should strive to own their own bank so as to be able to
ensure savings and lending to members, saying by doing this; issues of high
interest rate may be at their discretion.
When Food Farm News cornered the bank
official on the issue for more clarification especially on the demand for his
bank recapitalization, he response was that farmers’ savings to the bank is the
surest way to ensure agriculture financing, added that you can imagine fifty Naira
(N50) per day from each farmer multiply by 30 days, and again multiply by 14
million farmers in Nigeria. You can imagine what this would amount in a
shortest time. Why can’t farmers own their bank because government cannot
continue to put money in the bank for farmers?
However, the
Managing Director of NAIC Mrs. Folashade Joseph enjoined farmers to take
opportunity in the agricultural insurance to de risk some of the losses the
sector is prone to saying that “farmers who had one time or the other insured
their farms with NAIC will have the opportunity to give testimony of their
experiences. I will like to urge the farmers to be honest with us. Whilst
praises will be fine, we shall be more delight to know areas where you expect
improvements in service delivery from us”
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