Nigeria’s Agriculture will be the true alternative to its oil resource if only it is buttressed by sustainable funding and not by the multitude of interventions currently competing with one another without involving the real practicing farmers in evolving them.
There was a bill for an Act to establish the National Agricultural Development Fund (NADF) sponsored by a ‘farmer-legislator’ that was presented for public hearing at the Senate recently and where AFAN was invited to present a memorandum.
In the course of the public hearing it became clear that the bill was the long awaited opportunity for stake holders to articulate their discontent with the haphazard interventions from many sectors in support of Agriculture.
Whereas the narrative in the public space is that a lot of gains have been made in the Agriculture space it is feared that it may not be sustained unless a sustainable funding mechanism is evolved and the bill for the establishment of the National Agricultural Development Fund offers the solution.
AFAN loudly and articulately supported the enactment of the bill at the public hearing and the subsequent establishment of the fund especially because it encapsulates that it (AFAN) will serve on the board of the fund. It is very clear that this fund will guarantee the availability of funds for Agricultural Development and R&D as the critical stakeholders will be directly involved in its management.
The credit from the CBN, through commercial banks and several other windows is not necessarily available to the real farmers but largely to brief case carrying farmers in Abuja. The psychology of the administrators of these loan-giving institutions is not taking cognizance of Agricultural lending and its peculiarities.
In the view point of the crop farmer it is next to impossible to repay a loan even at zero percent interest rate in one farming season with the current low yielding seeds, scarcity of veritable inputs and fertilizers in Nigeria. The banks including the CBN do not simply care about all the inhibitors of production, storage, post harvest loss, marketing and transportation as risk factors in Agricultural lending in Nigeria because there is a clear dearth of knowledge and appreciation of the issues around Agricultural lending.
Some bank executives I personally interfaced with told me shamelessly that even at this time of the COVID -19 pandemic they consider loan recovery as the low hanging fruits to boost their income as there is no business anywhere.
What I did not bother to educate them upon was how on earth they could ever recover any money from a ‘business-less’ Environment!
This supports the point made by one “Distinguished senator-farmer” who suffered business failure occasioned by Avian Influenza (bird flu) which ravaged his poultry farm after borrowing 700,000,000! He said point blank that the bank simply did not care and only wanted its money back. How very traumatic and reductive for Agriculture!
The National Agricultural Development Fund is the answer to this anomaly and the Agriculture space will thrive without the commercial banks for Agricultural Credit and Agribusiness will definitely prosper sustainably with this improvisation which is apt and poignant!
I enjoin everyone to support this to usher in the much desired Food Security for the nearly 200,000,000 people to feed in Nigeria!
Ibrahim is the National President, All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN).
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