Reps probe CBN’s N1.12 trillion anchor borrowers scheme, NIRSAL’s N215 billion loan

The House of Representatives has ordered probes into the N1.12 trillion Anchor Borrowers Scheme, a federal government initiative to provide agricultural funding through the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

The lawmakers also resolved to probe the Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL), the Bank of Industry (BoI) and other agencies.

The resolution followed the adoption of a motion by Chike Okafor (APC-Imo) on the floor of the House in Abuja on Tuesday.

Presenting his motion, Mr Okafor linked the growing food scarcity and malnutrition in Nigeria to the alleged mismanagement of agricultural funds intended for agricultural development in the country.

He said the federal government had spent N8 trillion in eight years on various schemes and interventions to make food available for millions of Nigerians.

He added that the alleged mismanagement, misapplication of funds and abuse of the programmes had left Nigeria with the twin challenges of food scarcity and malnutrition.

Mr Okafor said that funds advanced to end users of the various federal government’s interventions had also allegedly been misused, misapplied and channelled to non-farming and non-agricultural purposes.

This, he said, was responsible for the current acute scarcity of food in the country.

Adopting the motion, the House mandated the Committee on Nutrition and Food Security, as well as the Committee on Agricultural Production and Services, Agricultural Colleges and Institutions and Finance, to conduct the investigation.

The committees were mandated to thoroughly investigate CBN’s alleged mismanagement of the Anchor Borrowers Program (ABP), for which ₦1.12 trillion was to be disbursed to millions of farmers.

The farmers were said to be involved in either maize, rice or wheat farming through 563 anchors.

The committees are also to look into NIRSAL’s disbursement of ₦215.1 billion to facilitate agriculture and agribusinesses.

The House gave the committees four weeks to report back.

The House also mandated the committees to assess how the Bank of Industry (BOI) disbursed N3 billion to 22,120 smallholder farmers through the Agriculture Value Chain Financing (AVCF) Programme.

The committees are to also investigate the handling of the N5 billion loan facility to the Bank of Agriculture (BOA) for livestock farmers across the country.

The committees will also probe the management of the National Agricultural Development N1.6 billion Recovery Fund for the Ginger Blight Epidemics Central Taskforce (GBECT).

The fund was for the control of Blight disease in Ginger, among other interventions.

(NAN)