The All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Lagos State Chapter, has eluded the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) policy restricting importers of maize from accessing forex from the official window.
AFAN’s Chairman, Lagos State branch Femi Oke, said the restriction would enhance maize farmers output, issuing that local farmers would meet the demand created by the new policy.
He said maize importation always neglected efforts of local farmers in production, adding that the new policy would enable the country to be self sufficient in maize cultivation.
According to him, if maize importation is being banned by the CBN, what this means is that our input and output here will be increase in order to have enough patronage.
“With this development, there will be more demand and more concentration on local farmers, as long as people are not getting supplies from elsewhere than the local farmers. “We will need to increase our outputs as fast as possible to meet the demand”.
“This is a very huge market and the support from the government will help farmers meet up with the increasing demands for maize. “We are very happy with this development, it is a plus for the agricultural sector,” he said.
Oke said CBN scheme such as Anchor Borrower’s Programme, Nigerian Incentive-Based Risk Sharing in Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) loan and others would help farmers adding that there would be more output to serve the consumers.