The Managing Director of a rice milling company, Aliyu Ibrahim, on Monday urged the Federal Government not to cancel its Anchor Borrowers Programme, but to rejig it for increased efficiency.
The core of the programme is to provide loans (in kind and cash) to smallholder farmers to boost agricultural production; create jobs, and reduce food import bill to conserve foreign reserve.
The CBN established the programme in 2015 to create economic linkages between smallholder farmers and reputable companies (anchors) who would uptake the formers’ produce for processing into finished products.
About 4.8 million farmers benefitted from the loan scheme as at 2022, but the programme was marred by loan repayment defaults.
Ibrahim said that there was the need for government to continue to create the enabling environment for Nigeria to be self-sufficient in rice production and export.
He said machinery should be put in place to sanitise the anchor borrowers programme to meet international best practices.
Ibrahim stressed that scrapping of the programme would not augur well for Nigeria’s resolve to be self-sufficient in rice production.
“The previous government did a lot for rice producers with the introduction of the Anchor Borrowers Programme.
“I think the present administration needs to do more in that regard; there is the need to examine how the programme can be improved, rather than abandoning it.
“There is the need to modify it and introduce other policies that will complement the previous one,” Ibrahim said.
He said in spite of challenges, his rice mill expanded its production lines in Kano and Bauchi States, while partnering with experts from Bangladesh and other Asian countries.
“We have been partnering with experts from Bangladesh in our production since inception and we are currently operating one of the biggest farmlands in Nigeria.
“With the partnership, we have been able to introduce a rice intensification system that yields an average of seven tonnes per cultivated hectare, a marked improvement on what obtained in the past,” he said.
He added that the company was planning to expand to three cultivation cycles per season from 2024.
The managing director also said that the company’s 10,000 hectares rice farm at Udubu in Gamawa Local Government Area of Bauchi State could produce 600 tonnes of rice per day.
The company was established in 2016 in Kano and started production of rice in 2018 with 320 tonnes per day.
In 2019, it invested more than 13 million dollars (about N16.3 billion) to boost its rice production capacity from the 320 tonnes per day to 1,520 tonnes per day.
