The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP) is believed to have yielded 2.1 million metric tons of rice and over 450,000 metric tons of wheat besides providing over one million direct and indirect rural jobs.
The programme is said to have also brought significant improvement in fish, tomatoes, shogun, cassava and maize yields.
Under the scheme, the Federal Government, through the CBN, invested about N33 billion in 21 states with Kebbi, Cross River, Kano, Jigawa and Anambra, Ogun, Niger, Benue, and kaduna states taking the lead.
Informed source in the apex bank said that the fast growing agricultural production will boost food security, conserve foreign exchange, tackle poverty and unemployment in the country.
It was learnt that the thrust of the CBN Anchor Borrowers Programme is to ensure food security, encourage import substitution, increase the income of farmers, fight poverty and conserve foreign exchange for the country.”
It was learnt that with the programme, the national output will rise to over 4 million tons, while the yield per hectare has increased from less than 2 tons per hectare to 6.5 to 7 tons per hectare.
Confirming the development, the apex bank’s acting director of Communications Mr. Isaac Okorafor, said that with the improvement: “we project that by 2018, Nigeria should be able to meet its rice needs. The good thing about this program is that no political farmer has access to it. All participants are geo-physically enumerated. every farmer must have at least a hectare of farmland that must be identifiable on satellite with his or her complete identity through the Bank Verification Number (BVN).”
Okorafor, who appealed for the active participation of all the state governments to fast track the economic recovery program of the government and help improve the standard of living of the Nigerian farmer, said: “we are impressed with the examples of Lagos and Kebbi. This is a case where the governors of the states took personal interests in the collaborative efforts that produced what we know as Lake Rice. That is why we recorded tremendous success in Kebbi. So, for the CBN ABP to work successfully, the state governors must cooperate with the CBN. The personal commitment of the governor of Kebbi was extra-ordinary.”
He encouraged farmers across the country to, as a matter of necessity, organize themselves into strong and disciplined cooperatives, to be able to successfully benefit from the CBN scheme for guaranteed food security for the nation. [myad]
