Business
1,300 Farmers Apply For Edo’s N1bn Agric Loan
More than 1,300 farmers in Edo, have applied for funds from the state’s N1 billion agricultural loan funds, the Commissioner for Agriculture, Dr Tunde Lakoju, has disclosed.
He, however, said that the funds would not meet the needs of the farmers as, according to him, the money needed by the farmers, based on their applications, is N10.9 billion.
Lakoju, who disclosed this in an interview with newsmen, said that notwithstanding the demand of the farmers, the applications had been analysed.
He announced that disbursement of the funds to qualified applicants would commence before the end of October and sued for cooperation from the farmers.
Lakoju said that the government was overwhelmed by the number of applications for the loan but emphasised that effort would be made to ensure that only genuine farmers benefitted.
He said: “As you may be aware, the process for the disbursement of the loan is almost concluded.
“The loan committee which is headed by the deputy governor, Dr Pius Odubu, is through with the analysis of the applications and we are going to start disbursement in a couple of days.
“Though the figure being requested by the applicants is higher than what is available, we have worked out a rational way of giving to everybody that is qualified.”
The commissioner disclosed that some application were discovered to have come from fake farmers and were promptly destroyed.
He said that the discovery of the fake applications was made possible by the assistance of officials of the Ministry of Commerce who supplied the list of registered cooperative societies in the state.
“In the loan arrangement, my ministry is working in concert with the Ministry of Commence to have complete and authentic list of registered cooperatives.
“We are going this extra mile because we have only N1 billion to give as loan, but what has been applied for is over N10 billion. So we must find a way of ensuring that only the authentic farmers get this loan,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Edo Chairman of All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Dr Peter Okpede, has expressed satisfaction with the processing of the loan.
Accroding to him, this is the first time efforts are being made to ensure that only the real farmers get the loan.
Okpede who is a member of the loan committee, blamed the high number of applicants on the extension of deadline given to applicants, saying that the extension created much problems for the committee.
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