By Haruna Musa
It was supposed to be a protest by aggrieved farmers against the Nigerian Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) for not including them in the CBN sponsored Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP), a scheme which supports small scale farmers with funds, tractors and others to improve yield.
But instead, it was a carnival like procession of noisy youths carrying placards with messages they evdid not understand. The National Assembly main entrance was taken over by dozens of Hausa speaking youths who sang and danced to the lyrics and drumming of local Hausa singers who arrived the NASS gate as part of the entourage of ‘protesting’ farmers.
They displayed posters which demanded nothing in particular, but only attacked NIRSAL and the ABP as a fraud, an omission which demonstrated these were not farmers but a hired crowd. It even became more apparent when the reporters interviewed some of their leaders as they contradicted each other.
Asked if they were farmers, one said in Hausa that they were labourers and immediately the other interjected “No, we’re farmers”! Then another confirmed they were labourers who were sent to come and protest. “They said we should gather at Jabi from where they brought us here, and they gave us one thousand Naira each,” he said in Hausa as he danced in joy.
One of the ‘protesters’ told this reporter they were mobilized by a ‘sanator’to come and demonstrate at the entrance of NASS but they did not know why. “They just provided posters for us to carry and they said policemen would escort us,” he told the reporter.
Investigations however revealed that the protest was organized and sponsored by Senator Yusuf Abubakar Yusuf, the Taraba senator said to be obsessed with installing his wife as the next chief executive of NIRSAL. Using his connection with a senior police officer in the Inspector General of Police’s office, he secured police permit and escorts for the ‘protest.’ That was why a handful of policemen were detailed to followed the boys to the gate of NASS for the protest.
Senator Yusuf was recently reported to be using his position as a member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Insurance and Other Financial Institutions to attack NIRSAL and portray it as a failure under the current management headed by Aliyu Abdulhameed who is the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer.
The end game is to portray Abdulhameed’s leadership as incompetent and corrupt, and cause a protracted investigation of the agency and the MD which would eventually lead to his replacement. As a member of the senate committee supervising the agency, he would be waiting to use his enormous influence to project his wife Maryam, who is in one of the top management positions at the organization, to take over as CEO of NIRSAL.
A source familiar with the plot said the senator plans to “create a conflict situation to provide valid reasons for government intervention. “Obviously, the senator must have reasoned that such an intervention would better serve his purpose.
According to sources, this is part of the reasons ‘protests’ are being sponsored against the institution and surreptitious moves made to discredit NIRSAL.
Meanwhile, a press statement issued by NIRSAL on Wednesday also said miscreants staged protests outside NIRSAL offices in Abuja carrying placards inscribed with “unsubstantiated and discredited allegations against NIRSAL, NIRSAL’s Managing Director and the Central Bank of Nigeria.”
The statement signed by Head of Corporate Communications, Anne Ihugba, said the protesters carried colorful flyers and placards accusing NIRSAL and the CBN’s Anchor Borrowers Programme of “diverting farmers money” and “killing farmers”, claims she described as “totally baseless.”
She described the sponsored protests as a failed attempt to distort the facts about verified contributions of NIRSAL such as the over N100 billion facilitated from the financial sector into the agricultural sector which is improving the lives of farmers across the country. She said the attempt to discredit the work of the institution by “persons who do not mean well” was bound to fail as “facts do not lie.”
But according to Ihugba, NIRSAL took the protests as opportunity to further enlighten the youths on what the institution was doing to turn agriculture into a thriving industry in the country.
She said: “Though NIRSAL found the inauspicious visit as an opportunity to engage and enlighten more young people on its agribusiness initiatives and the promise they hold, the protest smacked of witch-hunting and a well-crafted agenda to smear the organization. Questioned individually, the boys admitted to belonging to no ABP tickets and were in fact recruited from Abuja and environs, particularly from areas such as Mararaba, Mabushi and Jabi. This negates the claim that they are farmers from Kebbi State.
“To be absolutely clear, all successful ABP applications for the 2019 farming seasons have been honoured by NIRSAL. As required by the guidelines issued by the Central Bank, farmers with incomplete loan documentations are prevented from accessing the funds in their accounts until they meet the obligations.”
One of the farmers who benefitted from the ABP told this reporter that there was no genuine farmer in the country who would protest against NIRSAL “because NIRSAL has helped so many farmers across the country.”
Ihugba also revealed that NIRSAL made an interesting discovery which confirm our investigations. She disclosed that after talking to the youths, some of the protesters revealed that they knew nothing about NIRSAL’s operations and admitted that were sponsored to protest against NIRSAL.
Insiders said that the senator’s obsession to install his wife at the helm of affairs at NIRSAL is so strong that nothing is too mean or sacrosanct. That is why an institution like NIRSAL, which supports agriculture, a key programme of the Muhammadu Buhari administration, can become the target of corrosive attacks because of one man’s bloated ego.
A friend of the Senator however recently told Newsdiaryonline that the claims about his alleged plot are laughable. “This alleged plot is a hatchet job. You guys need to do alot to know what is happening at NIRSAL,” the friend of the Senator said.
