Banks, govt. officials are frustrating Anchor Borrowers Programme, says RIFAN official

Malam Sadiq Daware, National Treasurer, Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria (RIFAN) on Thursday accused some banks and governments officials of frustrating the successful implementation of the Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP).
Sadiq Daware announced in Abuja that many farmers had complained that they were unable to access the loan of ABP, executed by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). He said that other farmers complained that they were not given the agreed money to facilitate the cultivation of their rice farms.
Daware said that even though CBN had released N43.92 billion to farmers under the ABP through 13 participating institutions, some people were frustrating the efforts of the farmers to access the facility.
He also said it was so unfortunate that some financial institutions were not farmer friendly due to their complicated transaction procedures and their non-consideration of the gestation periods of crop growing. Daware said that all the previous efforts of small-scale farmers to access various agricultural credit schemes of the government had yielded insignificant results because of the unwillingness of the banks to cooperate with them.
He said some of the banks insisted that CBN had not given them specific guidelines on how to disburse the funds meant for small-scale farmers. He said that the farmers were compelled to fill pages of forms in the documentation process, in spite of the fact that most of the smallholder farmers were illiterate, thereby frustrating the process. Daware said that now that some of the bottlenecks had been addressed, banks were, nonetheless, delaying the process.