By Louis Achi
New statistics have come to the fore on why the President Bola Tinubu administration has ordered the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to immediately recover all loans disbursed under the so-called Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP) for rice revolution in Nigeria during the eight-year reign of former President Muhammadu Buhari.
The revelation further provided facts on why Emefiele’s tenure at the apex bank was renewed in order to continue disbursing the poorly securitized ABP loans to both real farmers and political farmers in the region.
In a revealing tweet posted by @StatiSense, figures revealed that amongst the 36 states and Abuja, 10 states had a lion share totaling N549.5bn for rice revolution, but till date, there is no rice in the market to show for the massive investments, rather, smuggled foreign rice have taken over the markets.
There are however, strong indications that part of the fresh charges pressed on the ousted CBN chief included irregularities in giving out ABP loans without equivalent results not to talk of repayment.
The tweet by @StatiSense showed as follows:
Kaduna State N139.9bn
Niger State N61.8bn
Kano State N58.2bn
Sokoto State N49.3bn
Jigawa State N48.1bn
Kebbi State N42.6bn
Katsina State (Buhari State) 5bn
Borno State N36.5bn
Gombe N36.1bn
Zamfara State N34.5bn
TOTAL: N549.5bn
An abridged statistics showed that no part of the country received up to half of what these 10 states received within the period under review.
Significantly, these funds were being delivered to these states within the same period Fulani herdsmen and bandits were dominating the forests. These spawned posers as to where and which rice farms these taxpayers funds were invested in.
Investigations in parts of the North on the ABP loans showed the beneficiaries are riding on the unconfirmed assurance that government will not call for repayments as many were not given with any form of repayment security by the Emefiele’s CBN within the period under review.
According to some analysts, is been why effective recovery of the loan especially in the north has been troublesome till date even as there is not enough rice in the Nigerian market to show for the humongous ABP loans.
