We’ll restructure, recapitalise BOA — MD

The newly appointed Managing Director of the Bank of Agriculture (BOA), Mr. Ayo Sotinrin, has pledged to restructure and recapitalize the bank to establish it as one of the largest banks in Africa.

He aims to achieve this through the introduction of technology and the development of value chains in cocoa, ginger, and other cash crops.

Mr. Sotinrin made this statement during his takeover from his predecessor, Alwan Ali Hassan, at the bank’s headquarters in Kaduna on Tuesday.

He stated that under his leadership, BOA will digitize all its branches nationwide, implement advanced banking solutions, and allocate capital in a smart, efficient manner.

Sotinrin expressed gratitude to President Bola Tinubu for appointing him to this important role. He acknowledged the significant challenges ahead but emphasized that with the introduction of technology and smart data, he is committed to delivering a truly innovative Bank of Agriculture.

According to him, “My task is quite daunting because we have a sector that is in need of a lot of restructuring. We need to create new food system, starting with seed system, we need to start working on how we mechanize both for small scale farmers and large scale farmers. We also need to look at the area of inputs within the agric sector, creating homegrown fertilizer and also expanding our land use for farms.

“I think nothing can start without having proper baseline data. We have farmers, we have farms, but how do you link farmers to the farm, because that’s only when you can start to deploy capital effectively and be able to use technology to track growth and to even track where the money is going into. All of these things are not achievable without technology, so big data is going to be our friend.

“The sort of banking we want to do now, we want to move away from those days of non-performing loans, have proper control in place in our new M and E systems and where we have extension services, or we have or we have collateral management to go to the farms to ensure people are doing what they said they are doing with the finances we give them,” he said.

The new Managing Director how called on large- scale farmers in the country to partner with BOA, saying that, “we are also encouraging large-scale farmers to look towards the Bank of Agriculture because we are going to recapitalize.

“I therefore thank the outgoing Managing Director for all the work he has done in bring this bank to where it is. For me, I want to build on that platform and success and I also want to take on the challenges that are surmountable.

“With the help of the President, Minister of Agriculture on food security, will join hands and make bold steps in agriculture. How do we produce, how do we process and how do we get Foriegn exchange? We need to think of how to develop a value chain, ginger, cocoa and so many other things we plan to work on as a bank. With capitalization, I believe we can do two to three times more.

“You will notice that Financial inclusion is one thing we talked about a lot. We are bringing everyone into the finance net. We will go to the hinter lands where we have a lot of youthful population of farmers and bring them into banking with us.

“Our plan is to become biggest banks in Nigeria and Africa. We are quite optimistic that we are up to task. Therefore, my message to the management team, is that I believe in team work. It’s a new day and new era. We need to work very smart. We need to use technology.

“So, technology adoption will be my message. I will digitize all our branches across the country and we will do very smart banking. We will deploy capital in a very intelligent and smart and efficient way. We will optimize some of the assets we have. We will change the agricultural landscape and be the food basket of Africa,” Sotinrin said.

In his handing over speech, the outgone MD, Alwan Ali Hassan disclosed that since his assumption as MD on May, 2020, the bank has recovered N8 billion.

He, however, noted that most of the recoveries made were from the anchor Borrower Program out of which, N5 billion has been remitted to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

He further disclosed that the bank as part of strategies to reduce it’s running cost, has commended the deployment of solar energy to it’s 110 branches across the country being funded by the recoveries made and it’s income.

He wished the new MD a successful tenure and enjoined staff of the bank to given him thier maximum support and cooperation.

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