Rivers PAN And Anchor Borrowers Scheme

During the flag-off of the 2015 dry season farming in Birnin Kebbi, Kebbi State on Tuesday, November 17, 2015, President Muhammadu Buhari expressed displeasure over the huge sum of money Nigeria reportedly spends on importation of food items. The President’s anger was not just because of the huge amount of money being spent on edibles, but that these food items can well be locally produced. Why then the unnecessary extravagance? You may ask.
Mr President unequivocally described a N1 trillion importation bill on mere food items as not sustainable, stating that Nigeria’s foreign reserve can be conserved by curbing the appetite for imported goods that can be easily produced locally.
This statement was matched with action as he personally launched the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP). Buhari expressed  high hopes that the scheme would lift thousands of small farmers out of poverty and generate millions of jobs for unemployed Nigerians.
The president’s optimism stems from the pride of place agriculture had enjoyed in Nigeria’s economy. The current reality in the global market has left Nigeria with no option than to diversify into other productive sectors, for which agriculture stands prominent.
The Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP) was initiated by the Central Bank of Nigeria after discovering that the allocation of huge amount of money to the importation of items such as rice, wheat, milk and fish among others was greatly contributing to the rapid depletion of the nation’s foreign reserves, especially in the face of low oil revenue resulting from fallen oil prices.
This discovery prompted the bank to shift from concentrating only on price, monetary and financial system stability, to act as a financial catalyst in specific sectors of the economy, particularly agriculture, in an effort to create jobs on a mass scale, improve local food production and conserve scarce foreign reserves.
According to the CBN’s governor, Mr Godwin Emefiele ABP is aimed  at creating economic linkages between over 600,000 small holder farmers and reputable large scale processors with a view to increasing agricultural output and significantly improving capacity utilization of integrated mills.
The initiator believes that if the proposal is adequately disposed, the programme would be able to close the gap between the levels of local production and domestic consumption, as well as complement the Growth of Enhancement Support (GES) scheme of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture by graduating GES farmers from subsistence farming to commercial production.
To make real its intention, CBN set aside N40b from the N220b Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise Development Fund for farmers at a single digit interest rate of 9%.  Since inception, farmers across the country have been benefitting in varying capacities. Many people have testified to the outcome justifying the intention of the programme’s initiator.
Yet, the poultry farmers in Rivers State, like the Biblical blind Barthemeus, have hopelessly been watching their other farmer colleagues being helped to the pool of salvation, via the CBN’s Anchor Borrowers Programme. Their inability to access an off-taker for this programme had been the bane of their efforts.
However, the inauguration of a new leadership of the Poultry Association of Nigeria, Rivers State chapter, seems to signal a light at the end of the tunnel. The avowed commitment of the leadership of Mr Bestman Wokelem to depopulate the labour market via poultry farming by making it a viable enterprise in the state, has restored hope to the hitherto  dying industry.
All things being equal, poultry farmers in the state can now, not only access fund to improve production, they have a ready market to mop up their produce. This may look more like the Biblical Manna in the wilderness. Even at that, the Israelites had to heed to some injunctions to be able to harness and make the best out of the manna experience.
This writer believes that this whole arrangement by the current executive of PAN, Rivers State, coming on the heels of Nigeria’s economic woes, will not only rewrite the history of poultry farming in the State, it will also have a far-reaching positive effect on the jobless population, the economy of the state and the nation at large.
But this can only be made possible if farmers would see it as a privilege and an opportunity to explore and not consider it as one of those national cakes that must be squandered. After all, the loan must be repaid.

Sylvia ThankGod-Amadi