The National Publicity Secretary of All Farmers’ Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Mohammed Magaji has urged the federal government to revive growth enhancement and anchor barrowers’ schemes.
According to him, the Presidential Fertilizer Initiative (PFI) and CBN anchor borrowers programmes have failed farmers to benefit from the agricultural schemes. Magaji faulted the schemes Monday at a three-day Northeast agro-inputs stakeholders’ engagement workshop in Yola, Adamawa state. The engagement of stakeholders was under the auspices of Feed the Future Rural Resilience Activity with support of United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Mercy Corps and Save the Children. The President of Nigeria Agricultural Input Dealers’ Association (NAIDA), Kabiru Fara, also said: “The hundreds of billions of naira spent on CBN’s anchor borrowers cannot be justified with current low productivity in the agricultural and livestock sectors.” “If 20% of what has been spent on Anchor Borrowers’ programme were made on GES,” he noted, every farmer would have been fully empowered with increased productivity and farmers’ incomes.
Continuing, he added: “While less than N100 billion was believed to have been expended on GES with massive impact, the CBN however; expended only N791 billion on Anchor Borrowers. “This is against the widespread complaints that middlemen, rather than the real farmers, are the ones feeding fat from the programme.” While comparing GES with the anchor borrowers, Magaji, who is also the Gombe State Commissioner for Agriculture; said: “The GES was popular and it remains the farmers’ choice.” He noted that even though the anchor borrowers are not discredited, farmers prefer GES, as wherever you were, whoever you were, you got alert directly for your fertilizers for collection. He therefore urged the federal government to either resuscitate GES or remodel Anchor Borrowers programme for rural farmers to directly benefit from the schemes.
