‘NigeriaNeeds N40trn To Dev Agric’

The Managing Director of Bank of Agriculture (BOA), Dr Mohammed Santurak has disclosed that Nigeria Will require about N40 trillion to meet the agricultural needs of the country.

Dr Santurak Stated this in Kaduna when the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Professor Sheikh Abdullah Visited the Bank recently.

According to him the nation’s apex agricultural financial institutions (BOA) needed more funds to provide adequate financial and advisory service to the development of agricultural sector.

He hoped that if the government could provide adequate fund for agricultural sector, more agricultural projects would be executed in many state of the federations to tackle the problem of food security.

Commending on the achievement of the Bank of Agriculture, the managing director explained that the bank had in the past 10 years disbursed N41 billion to 600 enterprises across the country.

Apart from that,  he also pointed out that the bank sponsored 20 large-scale projects each worth more than N100 million as well as disbursed N3 billions to 12 states as loan.

In the same vein, he said the bank created about 6.5 million jobs while 600 co-operative societies and 30 institutions collaborated with the bank to achieve its mandate in the years under review.

According to him, in 2001, the sum of N50 billion was earmarked for the recapitalisation of the bank but only N20 billion was released in 13 different instalment within eight years.

He used the opportunity to appealed to the minister to look into the problem facing the bank and ensure that the bank’s recapitalisation was completed to enable it achieve its mandate.