A CRITICAL APPRAISAL OF AGRICULTURAL FINANCING IN NIGERIA: A CASE STUDY OF FIRST BANK OF NIGERIA PLC
A CRITICAL APPRAISAL OF AGRICULTURAL FINANCING IN NIGERIA: A CASE STUDY OF FIRST BANK OF NIGERIA PLC
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2002-11
Authors
LIMAN, MUHAMMAD ALIYU
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
When Nigeria attained political independence in 1960, agriculture was the
dominant sector of the economy. It constituted over 65% of the country’s Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) and provided the bulk of the foreign exchange earnings
through the export of “Cash Crops”. The sector catered adequately for nearly all
the food requirements and raw material for industry in the country. Major expert
crops included cocoa, groundnuts, cotton, palm oil and rubber.
This situation, however, changed drastically at the beginning of the 1970s.
Agricultural output started to decline rapidly at a time which not only coincided
with the end of the Nigerian civil war but also with the period of oil boom and
severe drought of 1972 – 1973., the overall agricultural situation deteriorated
creating a wide gap between the supply and demand for food.
To this end, no meaningful national economic development can take place
without developing the agricultural sector. The bulk of the farmers expected to
contribute to this development are small scale farmers in the rural areas.
Moreover, they need modern farming techniques, which include the use of
improved seedlings, modern machinery, equipment and storage facilities. It was
found that the farmers cannot get all these items by themselves.
One of the major inadequacies inhibiting the farmers from achieving their
aim is lack of capital. In an attempt to cater for farmers finance problems, the
Nigerian Agricultural and Cooperative Bank (NACB) and the Agricultural Credit
Guarantee Scheme (ACGS) were established by the government to ensure
provision of credit to farmers.
One of the policies of commercial banks is financing agriculture as
encouraged by the Federal Government, this has been extremely difficult in
Nigeria. Banks especially commercial banks have shown a persistent reluctance
in giving financial assistance to farmers while the agricultural development
banks, like the NACB has not been performing to their expected standards.
This work therefore is aimed at looking into agricultural financing in
general and how far the First Bank of Nigeria has performed in agricultural
financing in Nigeria.
Based on the findings, recommendations are made to ensure that credit
are given to the actual farmers, to reduce default and to increase its scope of
operations by having more funds to be disbursed.
Description
Being a project submitted to the Department of
Business Administration, Ahmadu Bello
University, Zaria, in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the award of Masters of
Business Administration (MBA)
Keywords
CRITICAL,, APPRAISAL,, AGRICULTURAL,, FINANCING,, NIGERIA, CASE STUDY,, FIRST BANK