The Farmers Empowerment Association has said the stringent measures put in place by the Bank of Agriculture (BOA) are scaring away off-takers who are ready to buy agricultural products from the farmers.
The President of the association Mr. Obaje David, disclosed this in Abuja on the sideline of a quarterly event organised by Economic and Business Strategies (EBS)/ Refined Economic Development (RED) with the topic; “The Role of Central Bank in Agricultural Development.”
Mr David said the intervention of CBN in agricultural sector was good but the implementation has lots of issues.
The association’s president, who said their members are 6,000, also decried the mode of operation of the bank which it said was not living up to the expectation of the youths that want to take into farming and at the same time archaic in nature.
He said while the CBN is showing a lot of commitment to ensure that farmers got all the support they need from crop production to processing, he noted that one of the challenges confronting farmers is that the CBN do not have total control on its programmes along the line of implementation.
Obaje stressed that the CBN needs to go beyond releasing the funds to the agencies in charge, but also make sure they are being implemented timely.
He explained that while the Anchors Borrowers programme is a good innovation, farmers might not be able to access the funds in a state where the government is not interested in supporting agriculture.
He also blamed the late release of funds to farmers during the planting season on the
bureaucratic bottle neck at the Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL).
