N4bn agric loan: Pay back or face prosecution, el-Rufal tells farmers

GOVERNOR Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State has called on 12,000 farmers who benefited from N4 billion agric loan under Anchor Borrowers Programme to pay back with farm produce as contained in the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed ab initio or face prosecution.

The governor said there should be no excuse whatsoever not to surrender their farm produce, which cut across three crops; maize, rice and soya beans, in order to encourage the Federal Government to continue with the programme.

This, he maintained, was necessary so as to guard against food scarcity in the country, vowing that any farmer who failed to surrender his farm produce would be prosecuted.

The Anchor Borrowers Programme is a Federal Government’s initiative aimed at providing small scale farmers with farm input and soft loan to plant, weed and harvest the franchise crops of maize, rice and soya bean and remit the production cost with produce.

The minimum entry requirement is that a farmer must have at least one hectare of land to farm.

el-Rufai, who warned the farmers through his Commissioner for Agriculture and Forestry, Dr Manzo Daniel Maigari, at the weekend, said the N4 billion was distributed to about 12, 000 farmers at the rate of 175,000 per hectare, with expectation that an hectare should give the gross turnover of about N450,000, a development that would made it very possible to pay back as agreed.

According to him, “we have been able to capture 12,000 farmers for the three crops which are maize, rice and soya beans. Everything that went into wet season is about N4 billion. This is the time farmers are expected to surrender their farm produce covered under the anchor programme. It is important because if they don’t pay with the produce, the programme will not continue,” he said.