Maize farmers want the Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) to quickly release the first tranche of N247 million loan to farmers to commence farming.
The farmers, under the auspices of Hope Concept Cooperative in Ifo, Ogun State, said they applied for a N342 million loan from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to support their maize cultivation programme for the second half of 2018.
The CBN has since 19th of July approved the loan and sent a credit note to NIRSAL for onward disbursement to farmers, but farmers under the cooperative say they are yet to get the fund after 14 working days.
“We applied for the NIRSAL intervention fund in agriculture. Having met all the requirements and verification done by the CBN, the money was approved by the apex bank,” a farmer under the cooperative, who did not want his name mentioned, told BDSUNDAY.
“But NIRSAL has not released the money to us after two weeks. Farming is timely and if we do not get to the farm on time, then the purpose of seeking for the loan is defeated.
“We have entered an agreement with Flour Mills to off-take from us. The delay would make us miss out in meeting up with our agreement with them,” the farmer said.
He stated that about 1,000 maize farmers under the scheme applied for the loan but after the verification and pruning exercise done by the CBN, 872 farmers qualified for the loan.
Upon approval of the loan, the cooperative has paid the required N16 million equity counterpart fund requested by the CBN, the farmer said.
According to the farmer, the cooperative has already got an initial support of N23 million from a microfinance bank in Lagos and the money has been spent on clearing and tilling the land waiting for the money from NIRSAL to purchase inputs.
Maize crop takes an average of 90 and 100 days to mature from the day of planting, depending on the variety, and these should fall within the period of rains, otherwise farmers’ yield will be low.
Similarly, the farmers’ inability to plant as and when due will lead to high rate of default in the loan repayment, as interest would keep accruing.
NIRSAL, when contacted by BDSUNDAY, said that it was still carrying out verification on the farmers and that was responsible for the delay.
NIRSAL said it would likely conclude the process this week and then payments would be made.
“The money has been approved by the CBN but we need to do a credit check on each of the farmers. Until this is done and validated before we would release the money to them. The validation is on-going now and if we are able to do this within the next five days their accounts would be credited,” Anne Ihugba, head of corporate communication for NIRSAL, said.
“After approval, CBN still needs to send a credit note statement specifying the recipients of the money. The farmers are having training now, and afterwards we would verify their accounts and payments would be made,” Ihugba added.
The loan is for farming of maize on 1,000 hectares of land in Ogun State.
But a staff member of CBN who does not want his name in print told BDSUNDAY that the CBN had already carried out all verification on the farmers before the loans were approved, noting that the apex bank would never approve any loan or release any money unless proper verification had been done and concluded.
He noted that NIRSAL ought to have disbursed the money to the farmers within five working days after the approval.
The CBN staff said that any other form of training by NIRSAL could be done after the farmers must have done the planting, which is tied to time and season.
Josephine Okojie
