By: BARBARA BAKO, Abuja.
Nigeria may soon achieve its aim in food security following the decision of the Nigerian Incentive Based Risk Sharing System For Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) to support half a mullion Farmers to cultivate 600,000 hectares of land.
Aliya Abdulhammed, the Managing Director of NIRSAL, said in Abuja while announcing the partnership with PULA, an insurance and technology company which uses technology and data to provide farmers with protection and agronomy to protect them from risks and grow their income.
Abdul hameed said the partnership would protect farmers’ investment and encourage improved production as well develop new innovative insurance products that are flexible for farmers to repay loans.
Abdulhameed who spoke at a workshop titled `Accelerating Growth of Agriculture Insurance in Nigeria, Lessons Learnt and Way Forward’ hinted that NIRSAL had introduced a new insurance product known as Area Yield Index.
The managing director said the aim of the insurance product was to lift farmers out of poverty, guarantee improved livelihood, food security and economic development.
“Infact,it is about 2000 percent increase from our first outing under the anchor borrower programme” he said
He added ” if you convert these 500,000 farmers operating on 600,000 hectares we are talking of a target grain product equivalent of about 1.5 million metro tones of grain at an average value of 90,000 per tone of grain.
“It means that with the support of insurance companies and CBN anchor borrower programme, the Nigerian farmers under NIRSAL window will likely produce a gross revenue of 135 billion naira under the 2018 Season.”
In terms of engaging farmers and their families he said these 500,000 farmers at a ratio of 1 farmer to about 5 members of his family we believe this outing alone woll support 2.5 million farmers and their families.
He added that “these are huge numbers which NIRSAL deliberately went to some extend to bring out at the end of the day, the insurance industry as well as the finance industry work on numbers. The bigger the numbers, the more sense it makes for the industries to participate especially for a new innovative product.”
Abdulhameed also said “while we work to increase the percentage of private sector funds into agriculture we want to ensure that intervention plans like those funds from CBN are safe through adequate insurance coverage and therefore we are going to work closely with development department of CBN to expand the use of the area yield index insurance to cover all other windows of anchor borrower programme.”
CBN investment as well as other banks in terms of loans and supporting these farmers will also be safeguarded and hence to sustain this programme under CBN anchor borrower programme is guaranteed.
He added that Nirsal will continue to development agenda of CBN which owns NIRSAL 100 percent and by extension Federal Government agricultural promotion policy. At the same time NIRSAL will keep collaborating with other actors and stakeholders in the agricultural value chain.
Goslinga said “we are very proud and honoured to be a partner of NIRSAL who is really driving agricultural insurance across Nigeria. In collaboration with NIRSAL We have developed products that that have reached ten thousands of farmers across the country and today we are sharing some of the lessons and learning some of the challenges we’ve experienced in growing these products across Nigeria.
” how do you get data to price insurance product? We have really invested heavily with NIRSAL support in data collection to understand farmers yield achievement and what we’ve seen is quite encouraging. I was talking to a farmer and he said look we are hardworking farmers, give us access to credit and our market and we will take care of the rest. I think NIRSAL is supporting that.
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