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20260806 020000 UTC
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[00:00:07] of
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[00:00:27] of It's another trading day, good morning everyone, welcome to 55 minutes
[00:00:30] of current and relevant business conversations here in business
[00:00:34] morning, I'm Inne John and as usual, we'll start from what's going on in the
[00:00:38] global oil space, this morning we saw that oil prices
[00:00:42] steadied after steep falls in previous two trading
[00:00:45] of sessions, investors are
[00:00:47] of waiting to
[00:00:48] of see if efforts to end the US Iran war, which we know Oman
[00:00:52] has
[00:00:53] in interven, if that will restore traffic through the blockade straight of
[00:00:57] Homus, if that mean progress today. Qatar had
[00:01:00] said yesterday that mediators were making progress in effort to
[00:01:04] end the war, driving oil prices
[00:01:07] a lower, although Terran has denied uh the
[00:01:11] US president Donald Trump's assertion that talks are
[00:01:15] already underway, so uh following all of
[00:01:19] this we see Brent
[00:01:20] of is down uh less than $80 this
[00:01:24] morning and um that's at
[00:01:26] $79.75 a barrel 0.15 percent
[00:01:30] down and WTI also has dropped
[00:01:33] 0.71% to
[00:01:35] $72.25
[00:01:37] cents a bar. We know that Oman has intervened and the United
[00:01:41] States has
[00:01:42] of hinted that um perhaps we could hear a progress
[00:01:45] a report today uh but um we're not sure of that bause we haven't
[00:01:49] heard of Iran from Iran yet. Well Trump and Qatar's
[00:01:52] Amir Sheikh Tamin bin Ahmad Altani they
[00:01:56] discussed effort to narrow differences between Washington.
[00:02:00] and Tehran and improved the prospect for a lasting
[00:02:03] settlement. This was done uh yesterday over
[00:02:06] of a of phone call and
[00:02:07] of Mr. Trump had said that talks with
[00:02:09] of Terran had started and Iran faced a last
[00:02:13] chance, last chance to reach deal. Iranian
[00:02:16] officials insist that there's no negotiation are going on
[00:02:20] with the United States at this
[00:02:22] time and uh we head to the market
[00:02:26] where we saw the bear resurface yesterday. day
[00:02:30] so um it's the market closed
[00:02:32] 0.38% at
[00:02:35] 244,802.83
[00:02:39] while the equities we saw yesterday lost about be
[00:02:42] 500 billion almost 590 billion
[00:02:46] dollars is what was drawn out
[00:02:48] of the market yesterday so that brought us down
[00:02:50] of to
[00:02:52] of 158.015 volume is the only one that was in the green
[00:02:56] at the close of trade value and deals closed in
[00:03:00] read yesterday top gainers were avab and rate and
[00:03:03] livestock and top losers living trust multiverse
[00:03:07] multivivers dropped 10% yesterday uh micals
[00:03:11] also dropped and top trades had more of profit
[00:03:15] taking a japon gold sterling and
[00:03:18] fcnb away from the
[00:03:22] market now the rural electrification agency is partnered
[00:03:25] ecotech development nigeria limited to establish
[00:03:29] solar panel and battery manufacturing facility
[00:03:33] in Nigeria and this is as the federal government moves to reduce
[00:03:37] dependence on imported renewable energy equipment. Speaking in
[00:03:41] Abuja during the signing
[00:03:42] of the agreement, the REA managing director Abba Aliu
[00:03:46] said that the partnership will help build local manufacturing
[00:03:49] capacity a time when more than
[00:03:52] of 85 million Nigerians, that's about 40%
[00:03:55] of the population still lack reliable access to grade
[00:03:58] electricity. Mr. Lee described the agreement as
[00:04:02] major milestone saying that it marks the first
[00:04:06] time
[00:04:06] a tire one Chinese
[00:04:07] of renewable energy company will establish manufacturing
[00:04:11] operations in Nigeria. He adds that the
[00:04:15] project will create jobs, retain foreign
[00:04:20] of of exchange, reduce import and support faster electricity access across the
[00:04:23] country. And
[00:04:27] yesterday, the National
[00:04:28] of Economic Council, the N see they approved the
[00:04:31] refinancing
[00:04:33] of of the $3.3 billion dollar project gazel
[00:04:36] pre-export finance facility through new
[00:04:40] $4.5 billion dollar facility named project
[00:04:44] gazel 2. this was the outcome
[00:04:47] of the 159th meeting
[00:04:49] of the council which held virtually chaired
[00:04:53] by the vice president kashim shatima. the approval
[00:04:57] allows NNPC Limited to re- financed the
[00:05:00] outstanding balance of approximately $1.5 billion
[00:05:04] dollars under the original 2023 facility
[00:05:08] while unlocking
[00:05:09] of additional $3
[00:05:10] of billion dollars in liquidity to strengthen the country's
[00:05:13] external reserves and support ongoing fiscal and
[00:05:17] infrastructure priorities the government.
[00:05:21] next approval follows a presentation by the minister of
[00:05:24] finance Dr. Taiwan, who says that the new
[00:05:28] facility has been negotiated on more favorable
[00:05:32] terms, including reduction in the volume of crude
[00:05:35] oil pledged under the
[00:05:37] agreement.
[00:05:42] um, many Nigerians would know already, the
[00:05:45] NNPC Limited entered into
[00:05:49] arrangement under prodet gazel for a
[00:05:53] $3.3 billion US dollar uh
[00:05:56] facility uh for which
[00:05:59] 9000 barrels of cruder per day was
[00:06:02] committed uh now what has happened is
[00:06:05] a way to find means of
[00:06:09] reducing the cost of those
[00:06:12] facilities, project gazel 2
[00:06:15] facility is now presented, was presented to
[00:06:18] council for approval, which would enable
[00:06:21] NNPCL to be able to embark a
[00:06:25] $4.5 billion dollars project gazel to
[00:06:28] facility, now about 1.5
[00:06:31] billion the original 3.3 remains
[00:06:35] outstanding, so the 4.5 billion would
[00:06:39] settle the 1.5 and that provides national
[00:06:42] facility of $3 billion dollars for the
[00:06:46] federation. not only that, the number
[00:06:50] of committed crude will reduce from 9000
[00:06:53] barriers a day to
[00:06:55] 78,750, that's reduction of
[00:06:58] 12.5%. again, that also provide
[00:07:02] more fiscal space for monthly accration of revenue
[00:07:06] to the federation account available to all the three tiers of
[00:07:10] government, so overall, This is more around
[00:07:13] fiscal um efficiency uh, improving the
[00:07:17] fiscal space for for the federation and ultimately to the
[00:07:21] benefit the Nigerian
[00:07:22] people. And now let's
[00:07:26] talk about food security. Now
[00:07:28] the government has introduced Nigeria's guaranteed
[00:07:32] minimum price aggregation program. It's an
[00:07:35] agricultural market stabilization initiative launched in
[00:07:39] July this year backed by 550.
[00:07:42] billionaire federal allocation to the bank of
[00:07:46] agriculture and the scheme protects 2 million
[00:07:49] smallholder farmers from exploitative
[00:07:52] pricing and post harvest losses, but before
[00:07:56] now, of course we we've
[00:07:58] had lot of programs, which is why a lot of nigerians will be, oh
[00:08:02] is this yet another program? let's look at some of those things, we have the
[00:08:05] presidential initiative on food security, expanding stable
[00:08:09] crop production and irrigation, i don't forget that was the
[00:08:13] emergency rule against food insecurity in Nigeria under
[00:08:17] President Bolatubu, we also have uh the subsidized
[00:08:21] seeds and fertilizers for small holder farmers and
[00:08:24] then we have that supposed to run from 2022 to 2027
[00:08:28] the long-term agricultural transformation strategy
[00:08:32] that's also still on the special agro industrial
[00:08:36] processing zones we had lot about this was it last week it's supposed
[00:08:40] to boost agro processing and reduce post losses,
[00:08:43] national agricultural development fund that's supposed to finance
[00:08:47] agriculture and agribusiness. uh, we also have the width
[00:08:50] development program which is supposed to reduce with imports
[00:08:54] dependence, there's the green imperative
[00:08:57] program, accelerating farm mechanization, there's
[00:09:01] the school fiel, school feeding program which supposed to,
[00:09:05] mean i think this
[00:09:06] is the most popular of it, supporting nutrition while
[00:09:09] creating market for local farm. so these are
[00:09:13] programs before now and now we have this 550
[00:09:17] billion nara federal allocation to the
[00:09:21] bank of agriculture that's supposed to um touch the
[00:09:25] live of or the businesses at least of smallholder
[00:09:28] farmers, about two million them. so let's
[00:09:32] find out, perhaps we can get a bit of update on some of this
[00:09:35] former programs and then what to expect from this guaranteed minimum
[00:09:39] price uh program the federal government to the managing
[00:09:43] director and chief executive officer the bank of agriculture
[00:09:47] joining us from our buja studio, mr.
[00:09:50] mr. good morning, welcome to the
[00:09:52] program, very good morning to you,
[00:09:56] many thanks for inviting me over. good to have you. so how would you react to
[00:09:59] Nigerian saying this is perhaps one program, too
[00:10:03] many?
[00:10:06] um, the first thing you need to think of
[00:10:09] is why should a country? Nigeria
[00:10:13] have food and security,
[00:10:16] um, the president of Nigeria
[00:10:20] who um, feels the pulse the
[00:10:22] farmers um in. 2025
[00:10:26] realized that Nigeras are now
[00:10:29] complaining that the food prices are actually
[00:10:33] depressed, meaning prices that farm gates are not
[00:10:37] favorable to the farmers. if you recall in
[00:10:40] 2024 food inflation was 40%,
[00:10:43] 40%. in 2025 the
[00:10:46] president,
[00:10:47] with different initiative when
[00:10:48] it declared food emergency and all that was able to bring it down to
[00:10:52] 10.84%, and you can fact check me, I'm not, giving you
[00:10:56] um stories, lot of Nigerians um,
[00:10:59] you know, know this, and the ones the don't know this, they, I mean, they can check,
[00:11:03] this is stats by you, um, Central Bank of
[00:11:06] Nigeria, now that food has come down to,
[00:11:10] you know, um, depressed prices, prices of maze is too
[00:11:14] cheap according to the farmers, prices of you know, um, Cassava
[00:11:17] is even too cheap according to the farmers, and the president stepped in to say,
[00:11:21] why don't bank of agriculture, which... has been
[00:11:25] turned around, we call it bank of agriculture 2.0, coming with a
[00:11:29] fund to now guarantee
[00:11:33] offtake of food from farmgate for the farmers in
[00:11:36] Nigeria, because if you think about it, you have the demand tied,
[00:11:40] which are you know the millers, the FMCG
[00:11:44] companies to produce
[00:11:45] you know different things from from the staple
[00:11:48] crops, you also have the supply side, which is our farmers,
[00:11:52] the number of over 70 million farmers in are according to stats
[00:11:56] and you're thinking, okay, how do we balance it when
[00:12:00] the um food prices were super high, all
[00:12:03] household complained in Nigeria, now that is too cheap, the farmers
[00:12:07] are complaining, so can we have a missing middle, which is guarant minimum price
[00:12:11] being done in other countries, this is not the first time it's been done, but this is the first time in the
[00:12:15] history of Nigeria that an administration would actually think of doing it, and
[00:12:19] let me correct you, it's not 550 billion, it's actually 200 billion, and what
[00:12:23] we plan to do, sorry, sorry, you said is how
[00:12:27] much? 200 billion? 200 billion?
[00:12:31] okay, which is the guarantee minimum price, you mechanism,
[00:12:35] not necessarily a program, because a program means you do for a while and it fees
[00:12:39] off, this one is here to stay, it
[00:12:42] is part of what the bank of agriculture will be doing
[00:12:46] day and day out, because if you think of our regular operations, we give
[00:12:50] microcredits to millions of farmers through farm
[00:12:54] agregation company. "now the way we get paid back is we
[00:12:58] get them to aggregate this food stuff and when the food
[00:13:01] stuff are sold or the commodities that's when we get paid back so we've been
[00:13:05] doing it anyway you know we've been doing it for 55 years now we're now
[00:13:09] saying assign just aggregating food why don't we try as much
[00:13:13] as possible to ensure that you know we complete the
[00:13:17] cycle in the entire value chain of funding primary
[00:13:20] production of aggregating food after after
[00:13:23] harvest and als given guarantee minimum price, which
[00:13:27] is a floor price to farmers, that means that
[00:13:30] you know we solve the problems of you know smaller other farmers
[00:13:34] producing and food insecurity in Niger will become food secure, when we
[00:13:38] finish that we can now start to look at high value commodities, how do we support you
[00:13:42] know ginger, revitaliz, revitalization in
[00:13:46] Nigeria, export, because last year we exported zero quantity
[00:13:50] and Nigeria used to be the largest exporter in the world, how do we support sesami
[00:13:53] export, how do we support? export so these are sort of
[00:13:56] things that this administration is actually bringing to bear and
[00:14:00] bank of culture being a limited by liability
[00:14:04] company under under karma we are literally private sector
[00:14:08] driven in our nature the only differences
[00:14:10] were owned by government so we do things
[00:14:12] for profit
[00:14:13] but we prioritize impact before profit so this is are the things that
[00:14:17] you know we are trying to do i'm happy to talk you through the guarantee minimum
[00:14:20] price program if if if you want Nigerians to understand
[00:14:24] it. Yeah, I would certainly like to know how exactly is going to work,
[00:14:28] because, and I know this is not new um to
[00:14:32] you, where you hear that even though there are uh
[00:14:36] applaudable government programs, uh, it seems it
[00:14:39] doesn't get to the people who really need it, or the political
[00:14:43] sentiment the government in power
[00:14:47] blocks some people from being beneficiary, so we'd
[00:14:51] like to know how this is going to cascade to the people who really need.
[00:14:55] did um you know buring their political uh,
[00:14:59] mean like even the video we see there, it seems
[00:15:01] to be all about the
[00:15:02] politics,
[00:15:05] so we don't do politics unfortunately, like i
[00:15:09] said we are a private sector you
[00:15:13] a state to an enterprise, it's like cc saying china or
[00:15:16] CGC, they're not going to engage in politics, what you see there it's
[00:15:20] a flag off of
[00:15:22] you, the wet season where we give
[00:15:26] loans, not we don't share fertilizer, we give loans to
[00:15:30] farmer aggregation companies based on the fact they have done
[00:15:33] economics of production to say they want to finance each far.
[00:15:37] with million dira, six bags of urea fertilizer, four bags
[00:15:41] of MPK fertilizer, um um, five
[00:15:44] bags of um, you know uh hybrid ses and you
[00:15:48] know uh crop protection, so all that is
[00:15:52] aggregated into um
[00:15:55] a loan package and we now give loan
[00:15:58] to the pharmation company, the only difference is it doesn't get cash from
[00:16:02] us, you tell us who you want us to pay in terms the original equipment
[00:16:06] manufacturer or you know whatever um producer
[00:16:09] fertilizer we pay them on your behalf which is alone book to your name and we have
[00:16:13] a single ligal limit of about 10 billion now this guys
[00:16:17] who are figation company they do it anyway without us they've been
[00:16:21] doing it bank of agriculture before this administration was doing nothing as i
[00:16:24] believe you know they probably
[00:16:26] did a bit of an program and that was about it so now that we've
[00:16:30] stepped in you know with the federal mic to see how
[00:16:34] we can finance in the sector we're looking at how we're
[00:16:37] sure we are not doing procurement which will be riddled
[00:16:40] with, this is my brother, political farmers
[00:16:44] and we not doing that, we are very sincere about
[00:16:48] you know how we uh discharge our operations within the bank, we give loan to
[00:16:52] you that is guaranteed by instrument either legal
[00:16:56] mortgage or bank guarantee or
[00:16:58] you know some sort of liquid instrument, once you do that or
[00:17:02] nice which is our partner that we work with, what about what's the
[00:17:04] requirement that
[00:17:06] you who who qualifies?
[00:17:07] how do you get that requirement? thank
[00:17:11] you, so we put out the call for for for application, we got about
[00:17:14] 1,220 um proposals
[00:17:18] and we're able to select the 24 the best that we know we can accommodate.
[00:17:21] now the requirements for this famigation companies, you need to have been doing it before,
[00:17:25] so you need to have track record, you need to have a minimum threshold
[00:17:28] of um um revenues that you know you have been
[00:17:32] generating from this, but most importantly you need to be able
[00:17:36] to prove and show your... genuine farmers that you've been supporting over a period
[00:17:40] of time, so some them have 50,00 farmers that been supporting, some them have
[00:17:44] 100 thousand farmers, some them have even a million farmers, but what we do is we use
[00:17:48] technology across the entire process where you send us a
[00:17:52] list of your farmers, we put it in our system, if we see ayuba,
[00:17:55] aliu, dantata, if we see dantata, ayuba, if we
[00:17:59] see aliu ayuba, it might be the same person,
[00:18:03] but the system is so intuitive enough to check through the national
[00:18:07] ation number and filter through the fake farmers and
[00:18:11] original farmers and don't forget the farmers also have
[00:18:15] coordinates of their farm that have been that have been captured by this farmarigation
[00:18:18] companies so by the time you put it there you can link a farmer not necessarily only
[00:18:22] to his NIN but to the cords of his farm want to able to do that
[00:18:26] our system accepts it so out the 1 million farmer some them brink we're only
[00:18:30] able to choose 12000 farmers some bring 5000
[00:18:34] farmers only able to choose maybe se 700 farmers. by the time we
[00:18:38] do this with all the people that we've sort of
[00:18:40] you know um chosen amongst them, we will now look for how to
[00:18:43] support them with more you know uh flexible
[00:18:47] terms to grow the tier f aggregation company to tier
[00:18:51] three, the tier three to tier two and the tier 2 to tier one, what what it
[00:18:55] means is if you need 50,00 farmers want to support you and hold you
[00:18:58] and right the process of you start do to do 100,00 farmers so that
[00:19:02] we can have enough of this farm irrigation companies become the obligar
[00:19:06] for us right? rather than bank of agriculture record you know
[00:19:10] massive um non-performing loans through individual
[00:19:13] microcredits to 3 million
[00:19:16] farmerers companies to do it let me just
[00:19:20] let me just try to understand um and and it's really
[00:19:24] impressive when you talk about you the use of technology
[00:19:28] and they have to be registered mean we're looking for how to make
[00:19:32] niger Nigerian economy more formal and
[00:19:35] inclusive so we do need a data and all of that, but I'm just
[00:19:39] thinking of um, when you look a bulk of
[00:19:42] farmers who, perhaps a lot them do not,
[00:19:46] because I remember a former minister of agriculture had tried
[00:19:50] to use fertilizer, USSD phones and all of that, and it
[00:19:54] seem lot of people were cut off from that, so while we
[00:19:57] appreciate the use of technology and data and
[00:20:01] getting them registered, I wonder if you also doing
[00:20:05] something about helping them even get registered even have
[00:20:09] their data,
[00:20:10] you know, some part of Nigeria, I don't think you can use GPS, especially when
[00:20:14] you go to the north and you want to use a GPS and all, so how do you
[00:20:18] handle such such situations, people in those
[00:20:22] areas? you
[00:20:25] see, I'll be very candid, technology has
[00:20:28] moved from 20,
[00:20:32] 11 when the president, former president of AFDB
[00:20:36] was the minister of agriculture. this move to the point where
[00:20:39] i can use satellite data to actually know where you
[00:20:43] are, what you're doing a particular plot of land,
[00:20:47] when we go to... farmers sort of
[00:20:50] capture um data in very remote
[00:20:53] areas, we have device
[00:20:57] where you know we can take coordinates of the the farm
[00:21:01] based on GPS and GPRS, we can take the details the
[00:21:04] farmer, and we've done what is quite
[00:21:08] um interesting when I i when I got appointed by the
[00:21:11] president, the first thing I said on Air the very first time
[00:21:15] was to digitize the entire operations the bank, which we've done
[00:21:19] now, meaning "we have call banking application, we have a you know a
[00:21:23] farmer data registry that we're building out on and all that, and to be able to
[00:21:27] get the information of this farmers, when we go to the field with this tablet, we can
[00:21:31] actually open um not only n for
[00:21:34] them, but they can also actually get BVNs, so when
[00:21:38] we're boring the farmer and getting his details, we're automatically also at the same
[00:21:42] time solving problems of financial exclusion by opening the bank account for
[00:21:46] the farmer, and don't forget the founding fatherers"
[00:21:50] knew what they were doing with the bank of agriculture by setting it up in
[00:21:53] 110 you know locations across the entire country, giving
[00:21:57] us closer proximity to the farmers, so we have agents,
[00:22:01] colleagues, staff all across the country, plus
[00:22:05] this for migration companies that we work with, we have
[00:22:07] you know warehouses and offices in the romatest part of Nigeria, so we have a
[00:22:11] minimum one office for senatorial district across the entire
[00:22:15] country, so we are you know the bank of agriculture,
[00:22:18] meaning we are the... of farmers, so we go there to
[00:22:22] actually get those farmers in. now what's going to be interesting that you
[00:22:26] would see in coming months is
[00:22:30] a bank, mobile bank in a bus, we're going
[00:22:34] to have bank of agriculture buses going to the
[00:22:38] remotest part of nigeria to provide financial services,
[00:22:42] agronomy services to the farmers plus the one stop shop, the
[00:22:46] agro hubs that were building across the entire country. this is not a model. that
[00:22:50] we invented, we're not trying to invent anything, we just
[00:22:54] want to copy models, apply to Nigeria and do it very well, this is a
[00:22:57] model with copied from
[00:22:59] you know bank of agriculture, vietnam where they have 200,
[00:23:01] 2,400 outlets and they are going
[00:23:05] to the farmers to actually give you know financial services
[00:23:09] to the farmers, so with all this things that admission is trying to do,
[00:23:13] this is
[00:23:13] to ensure there
[00:23:14] is no farmer that is disenfranchised,
[00:23:17] we have you know many schemes that we're trying to do irrigation
[00:23:19] for r where we're going to be providing solar irrigation kits to the farmers to
[00:23:23] eliminate dries in farming to ensure that with solar
[00:23:26] power the farmers are not you know um they're not they're
[00:23:30] not waiting on diesel or petrol to farm and this
[00:23:34] mobile system so the few things but i would like to go back to the garant
[00:23:38] minimum price which you asked me because it's the best tool that this
[00:23:42] administration has actually put into the agriculture sector
[00:23:46] and this will revolutionize agriculture so I'm happy to talk to you about that as well.
[00:23:51] Yeah, I mean, and of course that's that's our major
[00:23:54] conversation this morning, and I'm also interested in how
[00:23:58] this program is supposed to help deal with post harvest losses. We
[00:24:01] know that from records, the country loses about 50%
[00:24:05] of food production to post harvest losses, and you did say
[00:24:09] that this is part of what it's supposed to be dealing with, so how
[00:24:13] do you connect that? So
[00:24:17] the few things in resolving uh... service
[00:24:20] losses and we call ourselves within the bank of agriculture a ding
[00:24:24] tank,
[00:24:24] not a thing tank, we are very very intelligent smart people who sit down and
[00:24:28] th you create programs and projects every day to solve the
[00:24:32] problems within the within the sector, but we call as a ding tam because we also
[00:24:36] do stuff, so now to solve um this problem, the
[00:24:40] smart thing to do is look at why we have
[00:24:44] post service losses, first of all the farmer farms and a
[00:24:48] particular time that one hec is bring he's giving him
[00:24:51] you know 3 tons, 3 tons is 3000 kg,
[00:24:55] if farmada has
[00:24:56] an nocada or um motorcycle can only
[00:25:00] move 50 kg at one time
[00:25:03] right, we are creating a scheme where we're doing emobility, cargo
[00:25:06] tricycles that are battery powered or electricity
[00:25:10] powered that can go out there, they've got
[00:25:12] a big back that can move
[00:25:14] to 2 to 3,00 kg at once, so number one you
[00:25:18] solve that problem of you know things are getting rotten on the field, number
[00:25:22] two, are the farm gate,
[00:25:23] you know you're moving things from the farm to the farm gate now, are the farm gate with this
[00:25:27] guarantee minimum price, we become buyers of last resort, we are
[00:25:31] there we are aggregators who are saying we want to
[00:25:35] buy all all of your stuff, boa has given you you know a floor
[00:25:38] price, meaning they can't cheat you anymore, we
[00:25:42] create a system where we reduce um all the middle
[00:25:45] men trying to um play um
[00:25:51] um arbitrage where they buy things from the farmers because the farmers know these
[00:25:55] things are going to spoil anyway if they don't sell it and trying to play on the you know the
[00:25:58] vulnerability the farmer so so we eliminate that completely want to... able to
[00:26:02] do that, they move things to storage, whether you like it or not, if you
[00:26:06] look at b private storage and government silos, we
[00:26:10] have over 9 million or 9 million tons of storage
[00:26:14] in country, even with the mom and pop shop that is to
[00:26:18] converted to a warehouse to the big ones, so we can actually
[00:26:22] store stuff, now the point is the farm irrigation companies know they do for
[00:26:26] business, like i said they do without us anyway, they go to the commercial banks get
[00:26:29] money at 35% to actually give for farmers input through
[00:26:33] input financing scheme, aggregate from the farmers and they take it to the warehouse,
[00:26:37] but sometimes they price the farmers too low, so this guarantee minimum price
[00:26:41] means that they have to give the farmers the price that we set
[00:26:45] that the government has given to the farmer, which solves the problem the supply
[00:26:48] side, now the problem the demand the demand side means
[00:26:52] if prices are cripping up too high, the mers and the
[00:26:56] FMCG companies will start to complain, and when they complain about prices being
[00:27:00] too high, they they can lobby, they will... be for government to
[00:27:03] start
[00:27:04] you know um bringing any cheaperts from abroad which we
[00:27:08] completely would you know um uh frown to so on
[00:27:12] the demand side where prices are cripping up too high i think for miss for
[00:27:15] kissing point we're giving them 340
[00:27:18] 50000 uh per metric ton which is you
[00:27:22] know a far cry from the prices that went
[00:27:25] up to uh i think it went as low as 16000
[00:27:29] now it's cripped up since we started it to maybe about
[00:27:32] 310,000 because we're also doing sensitization on over
[00:27:36] 40
[00:27:37] um um digital channels uh radio uh tv and print
[00:27:41] media um once we're able to give these
[00:27:45] farmers guarantee minimum price we're storing value we're not wasting
[00:27:48] money we're not giving them a subsidy
[00:27:50] this gets stored in you know uh warehouses
[00:27:54] when the when the um when on the demand side these mailers
[00:27:58] are complaining and the prices are cripping up to 45000 50000
[00:28:03] at at particular point in 2023 may prices
[00:28:07] was about 600,00 per ton, we can now release this grains to the
[00:28:11] market and release it to the market at maybe 400
[00:28:15] thousand, so that's what we call a market stabilization mechanism that
[00:28:19] this administration is trying to
[00:28:21] you know um um implement
[00:28:25] for the agriculture sector in Nigeria,
[00:28:27] meaning there's no one who complains about food prices
[00:28:31] are too high or... food prices are too low, yeah, and and I
[00:28:35] guess with a plan like this, Nigeria should be able to
[00:28:38] overcome,
[00:28:39] you know, the uh off-season hike in at the
[00:28:43] price of some food crops and all of that, but I mean even from the
[00:28:47] explanation you have given, it sounds like it needs a lot
[00:28:50] of coordination, I wonder um, how you have the
[00:28:54] value chain around that, what plans you have
[00:28:58] there? Okay, I'll continue to
[00:29:02] go... um back to the point that made earlier that this farm
[00:29:05] aggregation companies, they do without us,
[00:29:08] likes of norma aeffects, driver
[00:29:11] greek, they support half million farmers each,
[00:29:15] they know how to you know aggregate from the farmers and
[00:29:19] they have contracts with you know fls of Nigeria,
[00:29:23] what, TGI, alls of this world, we are now
[00:29:27] trying to say if we step in with step we stepping in
[00:29:31] not only to...
[00:29:32] you to grow you from 500 thousand farmers to million farmers, because we are trying
[00:29:36] to finance 70 million farmers in Nigeria, if
[00:29:40] you know we continue to uh raise enough capital for that, we are
[00:29:43] trying to say within the ecosystem, we are
[00:29:46] bringing
[00:29:47] you know our own expertise, but the most important thing is working with
[00:29:51] everybody, and bringing together the power the collective
[00:29:55] where we all have different roles to play amerigation company has role to play,
[00:29:59] the exchanges have role to play, by the time you this commodities
[00:30:03] to the warehouse, the NCX Nigeria Commodity exchange or
[00:30:07] AFX goes to the warehouse to issue electronic warehouse receipts that is
[00:30:10] tradeable on on exchange, so it means that the flammers of
[00:30:14] Nigeria who want to buy, they stop disturbing themselves looking for grains, they can
[00:30:18] actually book on this exchange platform to say the one 40,00 tons of
[00:30:21] grains for October, and
[00:30:25] because there's an electric was receives that talks about that, and collateral managers
[00:30:29] who could actually attest the fact this... do
[00:30:32] exist in those warehouses, they pay through the exchange, exchange takes their
[00:30:36] fees, they pay the aggregator by aggregator pays us back the loan that we get to the
[00:30:39] aggregator, so it's all ecosystem, and don't forget we have a
[00:30:43] parent ministry that gives us direction that sets the policy, which is the ministry of
[00:30:47] agriculture,
[00:30:48] you know, man by the minister of agriculture and food security,
[00:30:51] senator Abubakar Kiari, so it's it's all working together as a
[00:30:55] collective, now we're going to be working
[00:30:58] you know in partnership with other um agen