Segun Adewumi (National President of the Nigeria Cassava Growers Association)
What is required of the government is to provide an enabling environment for the agricultural industry to prosper. This is because aside the fact that food prices are on the increase, we have some impediments that need to be removed in order to enhance the inflow of foreign investments and increase the prosperity of local investors.
One of the impediments is the non-acceptance of agricultural land as collateral for loan requests by farmers. It will interest you to know that on account of the failure of Nigerian banks to accept agricultural land as collateral for loans, many investors have relocated to other countries like Ghana. Recently, an investor from America who wanted to set up a 100,000-litre per day ethanol plant for cassava growers in this country relocated to Ghana. He relocated because the land, which farmers had spent hundreds of millions to acquire, could not form part of the collateral for bank guarantee that is required for foreign loans.
