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A Professor of Crop Science, Professor Samson Remison, of the Department of Crop Science, Ambrose Alli University, AAU, Ekpoma, Edo State, on Tuesday lamented that smallholder farmers in Nigeria were not able to access the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) interventions in the oil palm sector.
Remison made this known in his keynote address during the ongoing 2021 Seed Meeting, In-house Research Review and Annual South-South REFILS workshop organised by the Nigerian Institute for Oil Palm Research (NIFOR) in Benin.
“The Anchor Borrowers’ Programme of the Federal Government was launched to provide seeds and cash to farmers to grow crops. The participating Banks working with CBN lend to Anchors at nine percent per annum for onward disbursement to farmers. It appears CBN interventions in the oil sector are discriminatory as CBN interventions were mostly targeted and focused on the big plantation owners with impressive cash flow and better ability to pay back the loans. So smallholder farmers are not able to access the interventions,” he lamented.