Farmers knock CBN anchor, underrated food production to money given out

The president, All Farmers’ Association of Nigeria (AFAN) Architect Kabir Ibrahim has described the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) anchor borrower financial disbursement to agricultural productivity as not commensurate to billions of Naira already spent since 2016 till date, saying the real farmers were not the beneficiaries.

Architect Kabiru Ibrahim disclosed this in a chat with Food farm News on Sunday at Abuja.

He said that what the CBN has disbursed under its anchor programme since 2016 is more than the whole budget allocations of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, states and local government cum international donor agencies, added that the dividend of the programme in terms of agricultural production did not measure up with the huge amount of billion naira given out to food production even as the recovery process was difficult and ridden with misappropriation.

The AFAN leader lamented that the machinery for the loan disbursement may have made recovery process very difficult based on information from the media and other reliable sources especially in Kano state where about 10 billion naira was allegedly misappropriated in connival with a prominent public officer who alone was alleged to have taken money and inputs belonging to 1,000 people who were only captured without any payment for rice production programme.

Kabiru pointed that the CBN anchor programme may not be sustainable in terms of being able to revolve among the  farmers because the process  did not even target the real farmers who may be compelled to pay back through its captured structured in AFAN, saying that ‘’ my discomfort with the CBN intervention is two pronged. 1. It may not be sustainable and it is not targeting the majority of the farmers as it has no real data of practicing farmers in Nigeria. 2. It cannot revolve as loan repayment is absolutely discouraging from what we hear in the media about mismanagement of fund in some states like Kano where the misuse of the sum of 10,000,000,000.00 is being investigated’’

‘’ The total intervention of the CBN in agriculture is colossal than the total budget of Agriculture ministries of the 36 states and FMARD combined. I find this absolutely scary against the backdrop of our agricultural productivity from 2016 to date and the level of food sufficiency in Nigeria. When you look at the investment and several windows and various amount of money from various donors and CBN put together, you will see that what we produce is not even up to a fractional amount of money given out. I see that there are lot of mismanagement and misappropriation of the fund’’

He posited that National Agricultural Development Fund at the National assembly would solve the problem of fund misappropriation in this sector, saying the bill would office the funds coming into Agriculture from various places like export, and be able to give accountability with ability to give loan to farmers at 3% interest rate that would allow easy repayment for other to benefit.

The small scale farmers’ leader also expressed that his members must be supported by the Government Guarantee Minimum Price (GMP) so as to enable them quickly return back to farms, pointed that was the world practice towards farmers’ motivation, and Nigeria cannot be the last in the practice.  He also advocated that all the silos must be used to capacity for food storage across all the state.

Speaking on AFAN election, Ibrahim said that the election would be conducted as soon as the matter in court is dispensed.