Some loans dispersed to rice farmers under the Federal Government’s Anchor Borrowers Programme may not be recovered, as the farmers say they can’t meet their loan obligations following extensive damage done to their farms by flooding.
No fewer than 360,000 farmers that got loans from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) are affected.
Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria (RIFAN) is rather asking the government to bail out affected farmers by granting fresh loans to enable them to engage in dry season farming.
Aminu Goroyo, national president of RIFAN, said this is only the way through which farmers who benefitted from the scheme can service their loans.
Farmers in major rice producing states like Kebbi, Jigawa, Kogi, Anambra among states are believed to have been seriously hit by flooding which washed away their crops.
As of last month, 850,000 smallholder farmers had benefited from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)’s N160 billion Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (APB) in the last three years, Godwin Emefele, CBN governor, said.
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“In the past five years, the CBN has achieved a lot in agriculture, not restricted to rice production but spread over targeted 15 different commodities.
“For instance, since the launch of ABP in November 2015, over 850,000 small holder farmers have benefited from N160 billion disbursed under the programme,” Emefele said at a town hall meeting on Agriculture in Dutse, Jigawa.
But Goroyo, who spoke in Abuja on Monday, lamented the plight of rice farmers, saying that the huge losses resulting from the massive flooding of their farms have compounded the difficulty of members in meeting their loan obligations to lenders.
Goroyo, who commended the thoughtfulness of the initiative, said: “Most of the affected farmers no longer have the capacity for loan repayment, having lost most of their crops to floods.
Rice is one of Nigeria’s staple foods. Production has shot up following the ban slammed on imported rice by the Federal Government. The ban was to help grow more rice locally and in the long run not be self-sufficient but reduce the price of the produce, but it is yet to be seen whether this has been achieve.
In May last year, CBN had said that benefiting farmers had paid back over N7 billion from the loans they got under the programme, contrary to insinuations in some quarters that the farmers were unwilling to pay back their loans.
JOSHUA BASSEY & ODINAKA ANUDU
