The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), has said that the agricultural intervention programmes were meant for every Nigerian and not to favour a particular segment of the country.
The bank frowned at the poor response of the South-East, saying it was not encouraging and urged the zone to embrace the programmes to grow their businesses and agriculture.
While advising the zone to embrace the programmes to grow their businesses and agriculture, the bank said it would continue to support Nigerians that show interest in the various intervention programmes, insisting that the impact had been tremendous since they started in the country.
The apex bank’s clarification came as the Enugu State government identified the inability to domesticate commodities that the state has a comparative advantage as part of the challenges facing the Anchor Borrowers Programme of the bank in the state.
It, therefore, appealed to the bank to domesticate its Nsukka honey and Nsukka pepper and piggery as some of the commodities that are doing well and should be supported in the state.
The CBN Acting Director, Corporate Communications, Osita Nwanusiobi, who spoke at a fair organised for farmers and bank officials in Enugu State, said that the bank had done well with her intervention programmes, lamenting however that its reception had been low in the South-East zone.
Nwanusiobi, who added that the apex bank put the fair together to improve awareness on the intervention programmes offered by the bank, stated that the apex bank was passionate about improving the well-being of Nigerians through agriculture and other sectors.
He lamented, however, that while other zones had continued to benefit, “we noticed that there seems to be a little bit of lethargy by people from the South-East in embracing these interventions and that is why we are coming out so aggressively to talk to them.”
On the complaints by farmers that some of the commodities the bank is supporting arrived late, Nwanusiobi said that the bank’s project team had aggregated the challenges and seasonality of the commodities, stressing that to overcome the problem, it had introduced wet and dry season farming.
He said that aside from sensitising the farmers on the need to access the intervention programmes, the fair would also discuss other challenges like bank charges, promote financial and economic stability as well as help build confidence in the financial system as a veritable platform for intervention.
On his part, Enugu State Commissioner for Agriculture, Mr. Matthew Idu, stated that the state had continued to do well in the production of honey, pepper and piggery but had not received the required support from the bank to boost production.
