The Maize Association of Nigeria (MAAN) has commenced a nationwide strategic process with maize farmers and other stakeholders to ensure the recovery of the Central Bank of Nigeria’s Anchor Borrowers Program loan from defaulting farmers.
The National President of MAAN, Dr. Bello Abubakar, at a meeting with maize farmers from the South-South and South-East geo-political zones of the country, held at Port Harcourt, Rivers State, noted that the association will work with the CBN to let farmers know that it is a must to repay the loan because it is not a grant nor a subsidy.
Abubakar disclosed that he and other top officials of the association decided to go round all the 36 states of the country, starting with the South-South and South-East, to deliberate and come up with all the necessary actions and measures to ensure farmers pay up their loans.
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He narrated that the purchase, disbursement of hybrid seeds and all other inputs, as well as the provision of extension services made available to maize farmers through the loan, has enhanced food production, saying maize yields before were 1.8-2.0 per hectare, but when ABP came, yields increased to 3-5 metric tons because of the availability of high-yielding seeds.
“If you look at maize production before 2015, it was 8 million metric tons in this country, but when anchor borrowers started from 2015 to 2020, our production has risen to 20 million metric tons. The records are there in the Ministry of Agriculture, IITA and the IAR” Abubakar said.
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The representative of the CBN, Senior Manager, Development Finance Office, Port-Harcourt, Mr. Celsus Agla, disclosed that the bank may end up deploying the Global Standing Instruction (GSI) as the last option to get the farmers to repay. He explained that GSI is a system that enables banks to retrieve money from defaulters by getting money from other accounts linked to the BVN of the person.
