Anchor Borrower: DSS intensifies interrogation for recovery on Associations, banks

The Department of State Security ( DSS) Agency has increased the tempo of interrogations on commodity Associations and financial institutions that participated in the Federal Government ( FG) Anchor Borrower Program ( ABP).

Sources from the affected Associations have availed Food Farm News with this latest development saying the DSS has intensified its interogations across all prime actors in order to recover back the loan given out on the FG agricultural program through ABP.

We were told that many lapses were discovered on the part of the associations which includes the wrong selection of beneficiaries occasioned by poor capacity to identify genuine farmers cum ill perception to the loan as being government largesse.

Also mentioned was the weak insurance coverage to indemnify farmers as many of the insurance companies engaged have no competent capacity against flood that accounted for over 80% of food losses to farmers.

Also mentioned as challenges  to commodity Associations is the insecurity due to herdsmen and farmers clashes, kidnapping and banditry across the states of the federation with negative impact of Covid-19 of 2020.

Although all these excuses according to our sources hold no ground before the DSS as the affected individual farmers and those under the Associations have been ordered immediate repayment down to the states' level within three days starting from yesterday.

The Managing Directors of some of the financial institutions were also invited to explain their involvement and process made in place for loan recovery.

Recall that President Tinubu has given a matching order for ABP loan recovery with September 18th, 2023 as deadline.

If ABP had been properly implemented according to one of our sources, it would have helped to improve the national average yield per hectare of many commodities with productivity per hectare almost doubling within the eight years of the program’s implementation.

Meanwhile, the activities of the commodity Associations have been asked to be put on hold pending when recovery is done.