BUHARIMETER: CBN recovers 24% of Anchor Borrowing loans as farmers alleges loan given to non-members

President Muhammadu Buhari in his next-level agenda promised that millions of jobs would be created through agriculture, including having the “Anchor Borrowers’ Programme to support input and jobs to one million farmers.”‍

In November 2015, President Buhari launched the Anchor Borrowing Programme initiative to boost agricultural production, create jobs, improve foreign exchange and reverse Nigeria’s negative balance of trade on food. This initiative aims to capture Smallholder farmers cultivating cereals, cotton, roots and livestock by financing their expansion and productivity through the Anchor Borrowing Programme.

The CBN reported in its communiqué no 145 that Between September and October 2022, under the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (ABP), the Bank disbursed ₦41.02 billion to several agricultural projects, bringing the cumulative disbursement under the Programme to ₦1,067.29 billion to over 4.6 million smallholder farmers cultivating 21 commodities across the country. The programme has come under scrutiny for its inability to recover loan and allegations that some beneficiaries of the programme are not farmers. In a news report by Sami Tunji he writes for Punch that:‍

“The International Monetary Fund has disclosed that only 24 per cent of loans disbursed under the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme of the Central Bank of Nigeria have been repaid. The National Secretary, All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Yunusa Yabwa, said, “Our members have benefited from the programme, but most people who benefited from the ABP are not Nigerian farmers. I must confess that to you”. Although the CBN kicked against this claim, AFAN argued that the apex bank was finding it tough to recover the loans because the funds were disbursed to individuals who were not into farming and not captured in the database of the association.”

The ABP programme was initiated and well-funded to provide for well over a million jobs, but the lack of proper monitoring & disbursement of the funds caused the programme to fail to provide over a million jobs the president promised. This promise is rated “Compromise”. 

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