How absentee farmers killed Agric Bank--Findings

* FG begins recapitalization

Investigations have revealed that the government had to recapitalize the Bank of Agriculture (BOA) because non-farmers posing as farmers in connivance with the officials of the bank defrauded the organisation by presenting fake identity cards, unregistered Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards and other documents which enabled them to escape repayment of loans collected from the bank.

Findings show that with the cooperation of insiders, the fake farmers simply destroyed their SIM cards and relocated to another address after collecting the money just as cases of shoddy record keeping so as to frustrate future investigation into the matter, were reported. A member of a commodity association told our reporter how the association’s account could not agree with the bank’s record as strange names were discovered to have been added to the list by the bank.

One of such fake farmers who refused to identify himself told Foodfarmnews that he destroyed his fake identity and SIM cards after collecting the money and escaped, with insider collusion in the bank.

Recently, the minister of agriculture, Chief Audu Ogbeh said during the recapitalization event for the bank held in Abuja that most of the people who took loans without repayment were big-time but absentee farmers, who invested in agriculture but failed to put in place the requirements for good agronomic practice.

He said that failure of the past has warranted the new beginning of the bank and that the new arrangement was a crucial step taken to resuscitate the bank as that it will be able to perform its mandate as farmers’ bank towards making agriculture a strong sector, adding that the recapitalization of the bank with the sum of 250million naira was with expectation that farmers who are the major owners would invest by buying shares in the bank.

He stressed that to help our farmers succeed, the ministry was going to make sure that it “gives support to the bank including our seed supply to farmers to make sure they don’t fail and provide support in soil testing and security of investment.”

The Director-General of BPE, Mr. Alex Okoh in his remarks said that  “This event signals the commencement of the recapitalisation and restructuring of the BOA, which has performed sub-optimally due to inadequate funding, poor lending philosophy, lack of robust monitoring and evaluation to recover non-performing loans, lack of proper governance structure and poor risk management strategy among others. It has become apparent that the bank cannot in its current status deliver on its mandate. We have developed a new strategy to transform the bank into a truly agricultural finance bank, a farmer’s bank, substantially owned by farmers”.

Managing Director, Lead Capital Consortium had this to say: “We are motivated by the zeal of the present government to revive the Bank of Agriculture so that it can live up to its full potential, to empower the entire agriculture value chain in the country and elevate agriculture to becoming the mainstay of the economy. We are fully set to move forward with the process”.

Minister of State, Senator Heineken Lokpobiri said “If capitalized, the Bank of Agriculture will be able to compete favourably with its counterparts in agric financing and lending. This is an opportunity to truly access funding not just for agricultural production but also for processing and value addition”.

The Permanent Secretary, Dr Mohammed Bello Umar said: “No country in the world can develop without a clear direction for its agriculture to grow. The restructuring of the BoA is a welcome development and we look forward to working with the financial advisers and the BPE to transform the bank into the farmers’ bank”.

The restructuring and recapitalization of the Bank of Agriculture are expected to be completed in 90 calendar days.