By Muhammad Amaan
The All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), has urged the Federal Government to restructure the Bank of Agriculture (BoA) to ensure farmers get full benefits from it.
National President of the association, Mr Kabir Ibrahim made the appeal in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday in Abuja.
“The Bank of Agriculture should have been our bank. I have said it in interviews many times that farmers in Nigeria should be given equity.
“We should buy equity from the bank just like Rabobank in the Netherlands. It is the farmers’ bank where farmers have a stake and are stakeholders and can guide its operations.
According to the AFAN president, this will enable farmers to feel a sense of ownership and responsibility, and ensure they pay back loans and contribute to the bank’s success.
“What I mean in the long run is that if we own the bank, if farmer ‘A’ is given a loan, he is compelled to pay back knowing that farmer ‘B’ is going to only get the loan when he pays back.
“But over the years, what has happened is that people took money from the BoA and thought it was their share of the national cake.
“So, if you look at it, there are many, many loans that have been given by the bank, which have not been accounted for simply because people who took them thought it was their money.
“Just like the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme of the Central Bank of Nigeria, most people who got the money felt that it was their share of the national cake. So, if you want to have a farmer’s bank, then we should consider restructuring.
“Restructuring is a very good move for the government to make. If it is actualised, and the bank is restructured to operate as a bank, with an operational banking license, and it’s able to sell equity to stakeholders, then that bank will work and it can achieve a lot,” he said.
Mr Ibrahim noted that in other nations such as the Netherlands, farmers go to an Agriculture Bank feeling that it is their bank.
“And they will not take money and refuse to pay back, and this is why the Netherlands population, which is hardly 70 million, generates income from Agriculture of more than 300 billion dollars. It is only second to the income from Agriculture in the United States.
“There is nobody idle there, and you know that 30 per cent of that country is below sea level. But there are no floods. Have you ever heard of any flood there?
“This is because they are using technology, and good engineering to make sure that there is no flooding.
“Anywhere you look there is farmland, and you see places and houses, there are farms in front and all that and every day they are producing,” Ibrahim added.
He said that was the way Nigeria should be because she had 84 million cultivable and available lands, and its soil was the best in Africa.
“Nigeria’s soils are the best because we have not used chemicals to destroy some of the nutrients in the soil.
“When we did the global food security conference in ITCA at Cornell University in 2016, the whole world was looking at Africa for food security because it is Africa that has the virgin lands.
“In Nigeria, we need to expand our cultivable and irrigable land; most of the land is not being used for cultivation,” he said.
The AFAN president called on the government to invest more in agriculture for now, and consequently use what is gotten from agriculture to invest in other sectors.
