By Abdallah el-Kurebe
The National President of Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria (RIFAN), Alhaji Aminu Muhammad Goronyo has commended President Muhammadu Buhari for ensuring that the CBN/RIFAN model of Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (ABP) commenced as promised.
Goronyo spoke at the RIFAN-ABP Model Input Distribution Workshop, which took place in Abuja on Monday.
According to him, “Mr President must be commended for the passion he has shown for agriculture. We must commend him for considering agriculture as business for farmers and source of revenue generation for the country.
“He has shown commitment for total diversification to agriculture and has paid specific attention the rice product, which import has continued to gulp a sizable amount of our foreign exchange, every year. Mr. President’s assurance that rice importation will stop this year is the reason we are here today.
“The CBN/RIFAN Anchor Borrowers’ Programme, the first of its kind in Nigeria, is being flagged off today by training input suppliers, service providers and other stakeholders,” Goronyo said.
He added that the CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele was concertedly committed to implement President Buhari’s agenda on agriculture, with specific attention to rice.
“On a no-day-no-night way of operation, the CBN governor has taken up Mr President’s challenge with vigour and all senses of commitment. We at RIFAN are particularly motivated by the governor’s show of wits that the ABP must succeed.
“He has been on the farms with ordinary farmers and has always put calls to farmers in order to have first-hand information about challenges. This sheer show of humility has gingered our farmers to also ensure that the programme succeeds,” he said stressing that “by the launch this Monday, the CBN governor has put Nigeria on the global map of agriculture.”
Goronyo assured that Nigerian rice farmers under the umbrella of RIFAN would not fail the country.
“We will not fail the FG; we will not fail the President; we will not fail the CBN governor and we will not fail the Minister of Agriculture. By the time we succeed, we will have keyed Nigeria into prominence.
“We are committed to give our best for the success of the programme and in a few months, Nigerians will celebrate the exemplary leadership found in the President, the CBN governor and the Minister of Agriculture,” he said.
Earlier, the Special Adviser to CBN governor, Mr Olatunde Akande said that only farmers whose data have been captured would be given inputs.
“There will be no collection of inputs by proxy. Inputs will only be given personally to farmers whose biometrics have been captured. The inputs will also have to be confirmed by the Development Finance Officer (DFO), RIFAN and Bank of Agriculture (BoA),” he explained.
Also speaking, the RIFAN Consultant, Alhaji Bashir Ibrahim said that the concept of the RIFAN/CBN model was new anywhere in the world.
“This project is a new model anywhere in the world as Public Private Partnership (PPP). It was meticulously designed to serve the Nigerian purpose having understood what Mr President wants. The components of Concept Development, Expression of Interest and Economics of Production (EoP) were designed to make the programme succeed.
“And, all forms of farmers have been taken into cognizance with the smallholder farmers are considered to enjoy 70 percent; medium scale, 20 percent and large scale, 10 percent. This was designed to ensure that the smallholders, who form Nigeria’s largest number of rice farmers, are encouraged by government,” he explained.
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