By Chinyere Anyanwu
The Niger State government has declared that it would prosecute and blacklist any farmer who defaults in the payment for agricultural inputs given to them on credit.
The state government, who stated this during the flag-off of the distribution of agricultural inputs to farmers on credit in Minna, the state capital, said the only way to ensure the success of the project would be the prompt repayment of the inputs by the farmers.
The Managing Director of the Niger State Agriculture and Mechanisation Development Authority (NAMDA), Alhaji Muhammad Alibaba, disclosed that 20,000 smallholder farmers would be edited from the agricultural inputs credit scheme while 10,000 hectares of land would be considered for medium-scale farmers across the state.
He explained that the project is under a collaboration with the Niger Foods Security Systems and Logistics Limited with a focus on rice, maize, soya, sesame and cowpea, adding that it entails the agency providing agricultural inputs to the farmers, which would be repaid with grains during harvest.
“We will give them these inputs on credit so that they can boost their production. To minimise the farmers selling the inputs, there is a provision for monthly stipends so that the farmers will have funds to pay for labour and to transport themselves. The repayment plan is that during harvest, the farmers will repay with grains of whatever they produce. They will return whatever we give to them with one-third of the value of what they have been given. All payment would be in grains,” he said.
According to Alibaba, farmers who fail will be blacklisted from benefiting in the next season and, if possible, prosecuted by the government.
“We are pleading with the farmers that for this programme to be sustainable, there must be timely repayment as agreed. For farmers to participate in the next season, their participation will depend on how well and timely they repay.”
The Niger State Commissioner for Agriculture, Musa Bawa Bosso, who reiterated that prompt repayment of the credit agricultural inputs being given to farmers was critical to the success of the programme, said that lack of commitment by farmers has led to the failure of a lot of government projects in the agricultural sector.
“A lot of organisations and governments are afraid of investing in agriculture in Nigeria because of the behaviour of some of the farmers. We need to fulfill our parts as farmers to ensure that we are honest in our dealings and make judicial use of these inputs so that we can improve productivity.
“We can’t say we are farmers and be found wanting all the time. That is why we are finding it difficult to have investments in agriculture because a lot of time, people fail in terms of repayment of these types of loans. Niger State government is not afraid of taking this kind of risk because we are committed to the new Niger agenda and make sure that we support the vision of the governor.
“We want farmers to take advantage of this opportunity to show that we would be better and we can feed ourselves and be prosperous.”
Bosso stated that there would be improved monitoring by the ministry’s extension agents in all local government areas to ensure that the farmers coming forward for the loans are genuine and that they would keep to the agreement of repayment of the credit inputs being advanced to them.