From Okwe Obi, Abuja
One hundred and six civil society organisations under the auspices of the Coalition of Civil Society Groups, (CCSG) have hailed President Muhammadu Buhari and the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, for launching rice pyramids in Abuja.
CCSG President, Bassey Etuk Williams, made the commendation at a press briefing, which had in attendance Rural Integrated Development Initiative; Women Right Alliance; Initiative for Leadership and Economic Watch; among others.
According to Williams, the rice pyramids were made possible as a result of the drastic decision of the President to focus on the agricultural sector by introducing the Anchor Borrowers Programme via the CBN to actualize the food security and sufficiency agenda by Mr President.
He said: “The recently unveiled largest rice pyramid by President Buhari shows that Mr President’s agenda on food security is yielding required fruits. The rice pyramid would not have been possible if not for the initiative of the CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele that introduced the Anchor Borrowers Programme to actualize the food security and sufficiency agenda of Mr President.
“There is thus need to celebrate President Buhari and Godwin Emefiele for food security and self-sufficiency in rice. The advent of Anchor Borrowers has been able to assist small scale farmers to increase production and supply of feedstock to agro-processors. It’s a loan without collateral to farmers being supervised by CBN, and here we are with the resultant outcome of the input.
“Farmers and especially rice farmers have recounted their gains following the output and major achievement of the Anchor Borrower’s Programme of CBN. The programme has increased bank finance to the agricultural sector, has enhanced capacity utilization of Agricultural firms involved in the production and as well improve the well-being of the farmers.
“The CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele has no doubt changed and transformed the agric sector with the results of the various intervention programme in the sector. The increase in banks credit growth was driven solely by the policy of deposit ratio introduced by the CBN Governor. More than five hundred thousand beneficiaries have benefited from the anchor borrowers programme of the CBN.
“This intervention also spans around youth investment funds, real sector and health sector. These are major areas that the CBN Governor has intervened and Nigerians are seeing the impact of the various intervention to alleviate poverty.
“With the laudable achievement recorded and showcased today, we the undersigned applaud the good initiative of CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele and President Buhari for food security and sufficiency. We hope we will have more laudable programs like this to further take our people away from poverty.”
Meanwhile, the group also commended farmers’ resilience and productivity amid security challenges.
“This is evidently shown in the largest rice pyramid, amidst insecurity in the land, the farmers were still able to utilize the finance to farm.
“The Anchor Borrower’s programme of CBN has no doubt yielded the expected outcome as we can now talk about diversification of our economy from oil but now Agriculture as the country will soon be on the map of rice exporters to other country’s by this earn foreign earnings. This rice pyramid reminds us all of the groundnut pyramids we used to have in the North,” the group said.
