The National Secretary of All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Yunusa Yabwa, has said that the Anchor Borrowers Program (ABP) funds were disbursed to non-farmers by banks.

This he said made it difficult for the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to recover the loans which is one of the major challenges the programme is facing.

Addressing journalists in Abuja, Yabwa said AFAN had told CBN to bring the names of farmers who were unable to repay their loans, but the apex bank has not complied.

“Anchor Borrowers Program (ABP) is a very laudable program by this present administration, but in every program like this there must be challenges, our members individually and organisationally have benefited from ABP.

“There are many challenges in many ways, the most people that benefited from ABP are not Nigerian farmers, I must confess to you. That is why you see today, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing system for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL), and the commercial banks who were the channels to distribute funds to farmers are complaining today that farmers do not repay loans.

“We have told them several times to bring the farmers that collected the loans, we know where to locate them, we have the data of farmers,” he said.

The AFAN Scribe further stated that the CBN introduced a mechanism to track loan defaulters but no farmer has been reported to the Association for inability to repay the loan.

“The CBN came up with Credit check to checkmate every Nigerian who has collected loans in the name of agriculture and owing the bank or commercial banks, but today, the CBN has not reported any single person to our office,” Yabwa noted.

He explained that CBN focused majorly on the rice value chain in its interventions while neglecting other commodity value chains.

“Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria (RIFAN) is a commodity Association under AFAN. This administration focused mainly on rice and ABP did not cover only rice, it was focused on all the commodities, even the processors.

“A lot of people collected the loans in the name of rice farmers but they are not rice farmers, the mistake has been done of not identifying the real farmers because banks were ready to disburse the funds and who so ever is interested wanted to collect the fund.

“Utilising the fund is not what they are focusing on, they were just focusing on recovery, at the end of the day, the recovery failed,” he added. (Nigerian Tribune)

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