The Executive Secretary/CEO, National Cooperative Financing Agency of Nigeria, Emmanuel Atama, has assured that $500m loan to 1 million farmers would reach real farmers and not politicians.
Speaking during an interview on Trust TV, Atama said previous interventions had failed to reach farmers due to lack of information and political interference.
"This is going to be different because now we have a minister that is passionate about cooperatives, that is removing all the bottlenecks along the line. Before now, we've not been called to make inputs to the programme.
"As a matter of fact, during our discussion with the World Bank, they made mention of some of the pitfalls of the Anchor Borrowers' scheme which they say they will not allow to play this time around."
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He added that since the announcement of the programme, it has carried out sensitisation for local farmers to take part in getting the fund through their cooperatives.
He added that the loans will be paid to farmers in the form of inputs to ensure it is used for the right course.
"Even if farmers are going to see cash, it's just between maybe 10-15 percent. Most of these loans come in the form of inputs. And where farmers used to run away with loan funds is when you have scattered farms. But now we are talking about cluster farming.
"So when you want to clear, you send a notice to all the farmers that you want to clear and the clearing is done by a central coordinating system whereby as soon as they clear, the amount, the cost for clearing will be drawn from each person's account and pay the amount...," he said.
