Hope Concept Cooperative, a Lagos-based farmers’ cooperative society, has commended the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for granting it an agricultural loan of N330 million in support of its 2019 farming season project. The President of the cooperative society comprising 1,000 farmers with its farmland in Abeokuta, Ogun State, Mr. Akin Agboola, while speaking to newsmen on the development recently, said CBN is set to release the fund to the society following its ability to meet required conditions for the loan approval.
Agboola stated that CBN had required the cooperative society to get into a partnership with a commercial bank that would guarantee the loan for it. He said the society succeeded in getting Zenith Bank to guarantee the loan and partner with it to ensure the success of the farm project. He noted that Hope Concept Cooperative had to seek the partnership of a commercial bank owing to its experience last year with Nigeria Incentive-based Risk-Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL), the body established to de-risk lending to the agricultural sector.
According to him, “we approached NIRSAL for agricultural loan and it was approved. CBN approved the loan too and disbursed money, which we confirmed was in NIRSAL’s account but when we didn’t see the money given to us, we resorted to newspaper publication to help us call on NIRSAL to release the money to us. Eventually, our members’ accounts were credited and we thought that would end the whole thing so that we could go to the farm. But even with the accounts being credited, they still would not allow us to access the fund until the farming season for last year was over.”
The cooperative president added that owing to his members’ inability to access the loan and go to farm, they approached CBN again, which assured them the fund would be withdrawn from NIRSAL, a promise it fulfilled in January this year. He said CBN is now set to give them the money to go to farm.
Speaking on another condition the cooperative had to fulfil to qualify for the loan, he said, “last year, we prepared the land for farming because before CBN gives you approval, your land has to be what they call tractor-ready. It means we will not use bulldozer. The reason is because the cost of clearing land, especially in the South West, is high. They told us that the land they will finance is the one that does not require clearing. All you need to do is get tractor that will harrow and do the ploughing and we have that, and they have inspected it and approved it and we are about to start.”
He explained that, “CBN is giving us a loan of N330 million for 1,000 farmers and it will be invested as a cooperative. The loan was secured from CBN at 9 per cent interest rate. We are planting maize and soybeans. We are looking at 6 tonnes per hectare, so since we are 1,000 farmers, we are looking at 6,000 tonnes and same thing goes for soybeans. So we are ready to go to farm this year.” He said: “Flour Mills is supplying us the seeds. We are also relying on IITA, Ibadan; they are also partnering with us for technical support. They will be working with us and training some of our farmers. We have Flour Mills, Animal Care Plc and Bayer Agro Processing as our off-takers.
“One unique thing about our farm is that we are doing full mechanisation; it’s not going to be manual farming. We will also be using water irrigating system to ensure that water is available when there is no rain.” The Sun
