The Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN has said that it is poised to make Nigeria a net producer of rice in the world. This was said by Issac Okorafor, acting director, Corporate Communication Department, CBN, while interacting with newsmen in Umuahia, Abia State.
He noted that the Anchor Borrowers Programme has been one of the most successful programmes in this country, adding that it had gone to show that, “when our people think well and we invest well and we mean it, we can achieve a revolution, which is what the anchor borrowers programme has achieved. We are continuing with it, we are expanding it”.
“This year, we are expecting that we will be self-sufficient in rice production. Nigeria will become a net exporter of rice because we have seen it. Most families now eat rice grown fresh in Nigeria, not the rice we used to import from India, Vietnam, and Thailand- rice that was 7 to 9 years old. Now, we are eating farm fresh rice, grown, milled and packaged in Nigeria. You see, we are very proud of Nigerians, because they responded to this,” he said.
Okoroafor further said that, “We are again getting into the next stage of the anchor borrowers programme, which is working with commodity associations, no longer states, though we are continuing with the state governments.”
“We are opening up a window for commodity associations. We have started with the Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria, RIFAN. We expect to reach 12 million farmers in this programme and you can imagine what 12 million farmers cultivating at least one hectare of land will bring to our economy.”
He added that CBN accelerated agricultural development scheme would involve ten thousand youths at the pilot level, and that the choice of the youths would be those who would take pride in agriculture, who also at the end of the day would be well funded to make agriculture big business.
“We are starting with 360 to 370 of them including Abuja. We look forward to a few years when we will come up and say yes, we have made 360 billionaires in agriculture. Youths, young people between the ages of 16 and 35, that is our target. They would come up to make this nation proud.
“So we are collaborating with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development on this programme. The details are going to be rolled out very soon. There has been a stakeholders meeting in Abuja and that is also our focus for this year”, he said.
Okoroafor said the CBN has spent about 87.5 billion naira on micro, small and medium enterprise development fund, which was designed for small business operators like artisans, hair dressers, tailors among others.
He appealed to Abians and other South- East States to key into the programmes of the CBN, to form strong cooperatives to enable them deal with the issue of collateral.
UDOKA AGWU, UMUAHIA
