CBN disbursed N629 billion to farmers under Anchor Borrowers Programme in 2022

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) says its lending through the Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP) stood at N629 billion in 2022.

The apex bank made this disclosure in its newly released 2022 financial report published last week. According to the report, the 2022 figure is less than the N949.2 billion earmarked for the initiative in 2021.

However, the CBN report did not provide further details on the pattern of lending and farmers’ compliance with the loan repayments under the ABP initiative within the year under review.

According to the report, the bank spent approximately N160.1 billion under its Agricultural Credit Scheme as against N201.9 billion in 2021. The sum of N9.6 billion was also spent on Accelerated Agricultural Development in 2022 as against N19.6 billion in the preceding year.

ABP

The ABP is an initiative of former President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, launched in November 2015 in an effort to boost agricultural production, improve foreign exchange and reverse Nigeria’s negative balance of trade on food.

Under the programme, loans are disbursed to the beneficiary farmers through Deposit Money Banks (DMBs), Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) and Microfinance Banks (MFBs), all recognised as Participating Financial Institutions (PFIs).

According to the programme guidelines posted on the CBN website, farmers captured under the initiative are smallholder farmers cultivating cereals (rice, maize, wheat etc.) cotton, roots and tubers, sugarcane, tree crops, legumes, tomato and livestock.

Farmers who benefitted from the loans are expected to repay their loans by taking their harvest to ‘anchors’ who pay the cash equivalent to the farmer’s account, the programme guidelines noted.

In January last year, while paddy rice pyramids produced by rice farmers under the ABP initiative across the country in Abuja, Mr Buhari said that over 4.8 million smallholder farmers across Nigeria have been supported with finance under the programme.

Following the implementation of the initiative, data also shows that Nigeria’s yearly national production of maize (a major staple among Nigerians and a key raw material for livestock feed production) increased significantly between 2014 and 2022.

The country’s production figures rose from 10.1 mmt in 2014 to 10.6 mmt in 2015 and 11.6 mmt ( 9.34 per cent increase) in 2016.

In 2017, the figure fell to 10.4 mmt but leapt in 2018 to 11.0 mmt. The country’s maize production climbed further to 12.7 mmt in 2019 but depreciated slightly to 12.4 mmt in 2020 due to COVID-19 impacts on food systems.

Eventually, production picked up in 2021 to 12.75 mmt and settled at 12.20 mmt last year, data from the United State Department of Agriculture showed.

The production recorded between 2015 and 2022 improved Nigeria’s ranking in the region and around the world and Nigeria now ranks 14th and 13th among global milled rice and maize producers, respectively.

Nigeria is also the highest producer of rice in Africa, ahead of Egypt, and it occupies the second spot among maize producers in Africa.

The ABP, however, was marred by a number of irregularities, which impacted production output and loan repayment.

For instance, a 2018 PREMIUM TIMES and Buharimeter investigation in five states – Lagos, Ekiti, Kebbi, Kaduna and Ebonyi – and in neighbouring Benin Republic, revealed that the ABP, which was heralded as the answer to Nigeria’s quest for self-sufficiency in rice production, failed in many places with the government unable to recoup a large chunk of the loan already disbursed.

The ABP gave rise to a multitude of angry farmers who claimed the programme was hijacked by local politicians who disbursed funds to “ghost farmers” and became a means of rewarding political supporters.