Anchor borrowers: N800bn disbursed to farmers- Osinbajo

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo says about N800 billion has been disbursed to four million farmers under the Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP) of the Central Bank of Nigeria.

Osinbajo spoke at the Feed Nigeria Summit in Abuja on Monday, stating that the fund covered smallholder farmers cultivating a variety of commodities on over five million hectares of farm land.

Launched in 2015, the ABP scheme was designed to provide farmers with the critical funds and inputs needed to increase local production.

Osinbajo, represented by the minister of agriculture and rural development, Mohammad Abubakar, said the production of 50kg bags of fertilisers through the Presidential Fertiliser Initiative has increased to over 60 million bags since its inception in 2016.

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“In 2016, we launched the Presidential Fertiliser Initiative to increase the production of NPK 20:10:10 fertiliser.

“Total production since the inception of the initiative is now over 60 million 50kg bags, with the number of participating blending plants increasing to 62 from just four.”

The vice president further said that blending centres were established across the country through the Special Agro-industrial Processing Zones.

The director-general, Feed Nigeria Summit Secretariat, Richard Mbaram, said the programme was organised to galvanise stakeholders in the agricultural sector to chart the way forward for the industry.

Mbaram stated that the stakeholders at the summit would come up with suitable measures to address the challenges of proper food storage to reduce the about 50 per cent post-harvest losses being recorded in Nigeria, among other recommendations.

“As a country, we are facing challenges around food security, and agro Nigeria has an entity that has been convening the Feed Nigeria Summit. In fact, they need to have this summit at this time before the year closes to ensure that we bring stakeholders together to discuss the issues that affect food security in Nigeria and take it to another level where we can leverage the headwinds to soar, upturning the downturn that is affecting the world.”