New Telegraph

Cassava: Nigeria to save $580m from CBN’s initiative

To curb importation of cassava by-products into the country, the Central Bank of Nigeria has resolved to extend

items that can be produced in Nigeria. Nigeria’s current situation “has also made it imperative for the central bank to work towards supporting programmes that will enable greater cultivation and processing of key agricultural commodities in Nigeria.” He then called on governors of the 36 states of Nigeria to make their states more viable by investing more in agriculture, particularly crops in which they have comparative advantage.

Emefiele identified land development as a major constraint to increase agricultural produce and activities in the southern parts of the country because of the regions topography. “The CBN has released about N7.436 billion to four States in the South-South region to open up more land for cultivation. The money will also be used to construct access roads to agricultural lands, and provide infrastructure among other support services in the region. Over 3000 farmers will supply cassava to the company which will in turn guarantee the off-take of their farm produce. The company will produce and process over 45,000 tons of high quality flour for households, industries and bakeries,” he said.

“This guaranteed offtake would encourage participating farmers to improve their output per hectare in order to earn additional income. It also provide them with a verifiable platform to access finance from the Central Bank of Nigeria and other financial institutions through the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme” Emefiele added. With regards to loans given to Rivers State, the CBN governor stated that “so far Rivers State has accessed over N13billion from our various intervention programmess and their loan status remains in good standing.”

Speaking at the occasion, Rivers State Governor, Nyesome Wike, lamented that the rural people of the state had not made up to one per cent effective utilisation of the N5billion intervention the CBN made available. According to Wike, “the CBN gave us loan and we thought that if we call our people in the rural areas to see how we can give them money to come out to the farm, to see how we can give them money to go and trade, to see how we can give them money to go and fish and as I speak to you, we couldn’t get one percent of effective utilization of those funds.”

Going forward, the Rivers State Government, he said “will identify and verify those genuinely interested and registered as cassava producers to this company, government will give them seed money to continue farming cassava.” To the people of Rivers State, he urged them to “apply to us that you want to farm only cassava, government will give you seed money to go into cassava planting but it will not be like the former one when you took our money and ran away.” Regarding the loans extended to the state by the banks and the CBN, Wike assured that he would repay all the loans before he leaves office. According to him, “any loan we have taken, the payment will be done by March/April next year we will not owe a dime to any bank before we leave.”funds and high yielding cassava stems to farmers. Importation of the byproduct gulps as much as $580 million annually.

CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, said on Thursday at the commissioning of the Rivers Cassava Processing Company in Oyigbo Rivers State the the apex bank’s strategy was to stem capital flight on importation of cassava by-products, just as he challenged all 36 state governors to prioritise agriculture. According to him, by deliberately “reducing our dependence on the oil sector, agriculture and the manufacturing sectors have emerged as key catalysts for reducing unemployment and driving growth in Nigeria.” The decline in foreign exchange earnings, he lamented, had made it imperative that the country can no longer afford to support continued importation of

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