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00:00:27of It's another trading day, good morning everyone, welcome to 55 minutes
00:00:30of current and relevant business conversations here in business
00:00:34morning, I'm Inne John and as usual, we'll start from what's going on in the
00:00:38global oil space, this morning we saw that oil prices
00:00:42steadied after steep falls in previous two trading
00:00:45of sessions, investors are
00:00:47of waiting to
00:00:48of see if efforts to end the US Iran war, which we know Oman
00:00:52has
00:00:53in interven, if that will restore traffic through the blockade straight of
00:00:57Homus, if that mean progress today. Qatar had
00:01:00said yesterday that mediators were making progress in effort to
00:01:04end the war, driving oil prices
00:01:07a lower, although Terran has denied uh the
00:01:11US president Donald Trump's assertion that talks are
00:01:15already underway, so uh following all of
00:01:19this we see Brent
00:01:20of is down uh less than $80 this
00:01:24morning and um that's at
00:01:26$79.75 a barrel 0.15 percent
00:01:30down and WTI also has dropped
00:01:330.71% to
00:01:35$72.25
00:01:37cents a bar. We know that Oman has intervened and the United
00:01:41States has
00:01:42of hinted that um perhaps we could hear a progress
00:01:45a report today uh but um we're not sure of that bause we haven't
00:01:49heard of Iran from Iran yet. Well Trump and Qatar's
00:01:52Amir Sheikh Tamin bin Ahmad Altani they
00:01:56discussed effort to narrow differences between Washington.
00:02:00and Tehran and improved the prospect for a lasting
00:02:03settlement. This was done uh yesterday over
00:02:06of a of phone call and
00:02:07of Mr. Trump had said that talks with
00:02:09of Terran had started and Iran faced a last
00:02:13chance, last chance to reach deal. Iranian
00:02:16officials insist that there's no negotiation are going on
00:02:20with the United States at this
00:02:22time and uh we head to the market
00:02:26where we saw the bear resurface yesterday. day
00:02:30so um it's the market closed
00:02:320.38% at
00:02:35244,802.83
00:02:39while the equities we saw yesterday lost about be
00:02:42500 billion almost 590 billion
00:02:46dollars is what was drawn out
00:02:48of the market yesterday so that brought us down
00:02:50of to
00:02:52of 158.015 volume is the only one that was in the green
00:02:56at the close of trade value and deals closed in
00:03:00read yesterday top gainers were avab and rate and
00:03:03livestock and top losers living trust multiverse
00:03:07multivivers dropped 10% yesterday uh micals
00:03:11also dropped and top trades had more of profit
00:03:15taking a japon gold sterling and
00:03:18fcnb away from the
00:03:22market now the rural electrification agency is partnered
00:03:25ecotech development nigeria limited to establish
00:03:29solar panel and battery manufacturing facility
00:03:33in Nigeria and this is as the federal government moves to reduce
00:03:37dependence on imported renewable energy equipment. Speaking in
00:03:41Abuja during the signing
00:03:42of the agreement, the REA managing director Abba Aliu
00:03:46said that the partnership will help build local manufacturing
00:03:49capacity a time when more than
00:03:52of 85 million Nigerians, that's about 40%
00:03:55of the population still lack reliable access to grade
00:03:58electricity. Mr. Lee described the agreement as
00:04:02major milestone saying that it marks the first
00:04:06time
00:04:06a tire one Chinese
00:04:07of renewable energy company will establish manufacturing
00:04:11operations in Nigeria. He adds that the
00:04:15project will create jobs, retain foreign
00:04:20of of exchange, reduce import and support faster electricity access across the
00:04:23country. And
00:04:27yesterday, the National
00:04:28of Economic Council, the N see they approved the
00:04:31refinancing
00:04:33of of the $3.3 billion dollar project gazel
00:04:36pre-export finance facility through new
00:04:40$4.5 billion dollar facility named project
00:04:44gazel 2. this was the outcome
00:04:47of the 159th meeting
00:04:49of the council which held virtually chaired
00:04:53by the vice president kashim shatima. the approval
00:04:57allows NNPC Limited to re- financed the
00:05:00outstanding balance of approximately $1.5 billion
00:05:04dollars under the original 2023 facility
00:05:08while unlocking
00:05:09of additional $3
00:05:10of billion dollars in liquidity to strengthen the country's
00:05:13external reserves and support ongoing fiscal and
00:05:17infrastructure priorities the government.
00:05:21next approval follows a presentation by the minister of
00:05:24finance Dr. Taiwan, who says that the new
00:05:28facility has been negotiated on more favorable
00:05:32terms, including reduction in the volume of crude
00:05:35oil pledged under the
00:05:37agreement.
00:05:42um, many Nigerians would know already, the
00:05:45NNPC Limited entered into
00:05:49arrangement under prodet gazel for a
00:05:53$3.3 billion US dollar uh
00:05:56facility uh for which
00:05:599000 barrels of cruder per day was
00:06:02committed uh now what has happened is
00:06:05a way to find means of
00:06:09reducing the cost of those
00:06:12facilities, project gazel 2
00:06:15facility is now presented, was presented to
00:06:18council for approval, which would enable
00:06:21NNPCL to be able to embark a
00:06:25$4.5 billion dollars project gazel to
00:06:28facility, now about 1.5
00:06:31billion the original 3.3 remains
00:06:35outstanding, so the 4.5 billion would
00:06:39settle the 1.5 and that provides national
00:06:42facility of $3 billion dollars for the
00:06:46federation. not only that, the number
00:06:50of committed crude will reduce from 9000
00:06:53barriers a day to
00:06:5578,750, that's reduction of
00:06:5812.5%. again, that also provide
00:07:02more fiscal space for monthly accration of revenue
00:07:06to the federation account available to all the three tiers of
00:07:10government, so overall, This is more around
00:07:13fiscal um efficiency uh, improving the
00:07:17fiscal space for for the federation and ultimately to the
00:07:21benefit the Nigerian
00:07:22people. And now let's
00:07:26talk about food security. Now
00:07:28the government has introduced Nigeria's guaranteed
00:07:32minimum price aggregation program. It's an
00:07:35agricultural market stabilization initiative launched in
00:07:39July this year backed by 550.
00:07:42billionaire federal allocation to the bank of
00:07:46agriculture and the scheme protects 2 million
00:07:49smallholder farmers from exploitative
00:07:52pricing and post harvest losses, but before
00:07:56now, of course we we've
00:07:58had lot of programs, which is why a lot of nigerians will be, oh
00:08:02is this yet another program? let's look at some of those things, we have the
00:08:05presidential initiative on food security, expanding stable
00:08:09crop production and irrigation, i don't forget that was the
00:08:13emergency rule against food insecurity in Nigeria under
00:08:17President Bolatubu, we also have uh the subsidized
00:08:21seeds and fertilizers for small holder farmers and
00:08:24then we have that supposed to run from 2022 to 2027
00:08:28the long-term agricultural transformation strategy
00:08:32that's also still on the special agro industrial
00:08:36processing zones we had lot about this was it last week it's supposed
00:08:40to boost agro processing and reduce post losses,
00:08:43national agricultural development fund that's supposed to finance
00:08:47agriculture and agribusiness. uh, we also have the width
00:08:50development program which is supposed to reduce with imports
00:08:54dependence, there's the green imperative
00:08:57program, accelerating farm mechanization, there's
00:09:01the school fiel, school feeding program which supposed to,
00:09:05mean i think this
00:09:06is the most popular of it, supporting nutrition while
00:09:09creating market for local farm. so these are
00:09:13programs before now and now we have this 550
00:09:17billion nara federal allocation to the
00:09:21bank of agriculture that's supposed to um touch the
00:09:25live of or the businesses at least of smallholder
00:09:28farmers, about two million them. so let's
00:09:32find out, perhaps we can get a bit of update on some of this
00:09:35former programs and then what to expect from this guaranteed minimum
00:09:39price uh program the federal government to the managing
00:09:43director and chief executive officer the bank of agriculture
00:09:47joining us from our buja studio, mr.
00:09:50mr. good morning, welcome to the
00:09:52program, very good morning to you,
00:09:56many thanks for inviting me over. good to have you. so how would you react to
00:09:59Nigerian saying this is perhaps one program, too
00:10:03many?
00:10:06um, the first thing you need to think of
00:10:09is why should a country? Nigeria
00:10:13have food and security,
00:10:16um, the president of Nigeria
00:10:20who um, feels the pulse the
00:10:22farmers um in. 2025
00:10:26realized that Nigeras are now
00:10:29complaining that the food prices are actually
00:10:33depressed, meaning prices that farm gates are not
00:10:37favorable to the farmers. if you recall in
00:10:402024 food inflation was 40%,
00:10:4340%. in 2025 the
00:10:46president,
00:10:47with different initiative when
00:10:48it declared food emergency and all that was able to bring it down to
00:10:5210.84%, and you can fact check me, I'm not, giving you
00:10:56um stories, lot of Nigerians um,
00:10:59you know, know this, and the ones the don't know this, they, I mean, they can check,
00:11:03this is stats by you, um, Central Bank of
00:11:06Nigeria, now that food has come down to,
00:11:10you know, um, depressed prices, prices of maze is too
00:11:14cheap according to the farmers, prices of you know, um, Cassava
00:11:17is even too cheap according to the farmers, and the president stepped in to say,
00:11:21why don't bank of agriculture, which... has been
00:11:25turned around, we call it bank of agriculture 2.0, coming with a
00:11:29fund to now guarantee
00:11:33offtake of food from farmgate for the farmers in
00:11:36Nigeria, because if you think about it, you have the demand tied,
00:11:40which are you know the millers, the FMCG
00:11:44companies to produce
00:11:45you know different things from from the staple
00:11:48crops, you also have the supply side, which is our farmers,
00:11:52the number of over 70 million farmers in are according to stats
00:11:56and you're thinking, okay, how do we balance it when
00:12:00the um food prices were super high, all
00:12:03household complained in Nigeria, now that is too cheap, the farmers
00:12:07are complaining, so can we have a missing middle, which is guarant minimum price
00:12:11being done in other countries, this is not the first time it's been done, but this is the first time in the
00:12:15history of Nigeria that an administration would actually think of doing it, and
00:12:19let me correct you, it's not 550 billion, it's actually 200 billion, and what
00:12:23we plan to do, sorry, sorry, you said is how
00:12:27much? 200 billion? 200 billion?
00:12:31okay, which is the guarantee minimum price, you mechanism,
00:12:35not necessarily a program, because a program means you do for a while and it fees
00:12:39off, this one is here to stay, it
00:12:42is part of what the bank of agriculture will be doing
00:12:46day and day out, because if you think of our regular operations, we give
00:12:50microcredits to millions of farmers through farm
00:12:54agregation company. "now the way we get paid back is we
00:12:58get them to aggregate this food stuff and when the food
00:13:01stuff are sold or the commodities that's when we get paid back so we've been
00:13:05doing it anyway you know we've been doing it for 55 years now we're now
00:13:09saying assign just aggregating food why don't we try as much
00:13:13as possible to ensure that you know we complete the
00:13:17cycle in the entire value chain of funding primary
00:13:20production of aggregating food after after
00:13:23harvest and als given guarantee minimum price, which
00:13:27is a floor price to farmers, that means that
00:13:30you know we solve the problems of you know smaller other farmers
00:13:34producing and food insecurity in Niger will become food secure, when we
00:13:38finish that we can now start to look at high value commodities, how do we support you
00:13:42know ginger, revitaliz, revitalization in
00:13:46Nigeria, export, because last year we exported zero quantity
00:13:50and Nigeria used to be the largest exporter in the world, how do we support sesami
00:13:53export, how do we support? export so these are sort of
00:13:56things that this administration is actually bringing to bear and
00:14:00bank of culture being a limited by liability
00:14:04company under under karma we are literally private sector
00:14:08driven in our nature the only differences
00:14:10were owned by government so we do things
00:14:12for profit
00:14:13but we prioritize impact before profit so this is are the things that
00:14:17you know we are trying to do i'm happy to talk you through the guarantee minimum
00:14:20price program if if if you want Nigerians to understand
00:14:24it. Yeah, I would certainly like to know how exactly is going to work,
00:14:28because, and I know this is not new um to
00:14:32you, where you hear that even though there are uh
00:14:36applaudable government programs, uh, it seems it
00:14:39doesn't get to the people who really need it, or the political
00:14:43sentiment the government in power
00:14:47blocks some people from being beneficiary, so we'd
00:14:51like to know how this is going to cascade to the people who really need.
00:14:55did um you know buring their political uh,
00:14:59mean like even the video we see there, it seems
00:15:01to be all about the
00:15:02politics,
00:15:05so we don't do politics unfortunately, like i
00:15:09said we are a private sector you
00:15:13a state to an enterprise, it's like cc saying china or
00:15:16CGC, they're not going to engage in politics, what you see there it's
00:15:20a flag off of
00:15:22you, the wet season where we give
00:15:26loans, not we don't share fertilizer, we give loans to
00:15:30farmer aggregation companies based on the fact they have done
00:15:33economics of production to say they want to finance each far.
00:15:37with million dira, six bags of urea fertilizer, four bags
00:15:41of MPK fertilizer, um um, five
00:15:44bags of um, you know uh hybrid ses and you
00:15:48know uh crop protection, so all that is
00:15:52aggregated into um
00:15:55a loan package and we now give loan
00:15:58to the pharmation company, the only difference is it doesn't get cash from
00:16:02us, you tell us who you want us to pay in terms the original equipment
00:16:06manufacturer or you know whatever um producer
00:16:09fertilizer we pay them on your behalf which is alone book to your name and we have
00:16:13a single ligal limit of about 10 billion now this guys
00:16:17who are figation company they do it anyway without us they've been
00:16:21doing it bank of agriculture before this administration was doing nothing as i
00:16:24believe you know they probably
00:16:26did a bit of an program and that was about it so now that we've
00:16:30stepped in you know with the federal mic to see how
00:16:34we can finance in the sector we're looking at how we're
00:16:37sure we are not doing procurement which will be riddled
00:16:40with, this is my brother, political farmers
00:16:44and we not doing that, we are very sincere about
00:16:48you know how we uh discharge our operations within the bank, we give loan to
00:16:52you that is guaranteed by instrument either legal
00:16:56mortgage or bank guarantee or
00:16:58you know some sort of liquid instrument, once you do that or
00:17:02nice which is our partner that we work with, what about what's the
00:17:04requirement that
00:17:06you who who qualifies?
00:17:07how do you get that requirement? thank
00:17:11you, so we put out the call for for for application, we got about
00:17:141,220 um proposals
00:17:18and we're able to select the 24 the best that we know we can accommodate.
00:17:21now the requirements for this famigation companies, you need to have been doing it before,
00:17:25so you need to have track record, you need to have a minimum threshold
00:17:28of um um revenues that you know you have been
00:17:32generating from this, but most importantly you need to be able
00:17:36to prove and show your... genuine farmers that you've been supporting over a period
00:17:40of time, so some them have 50,00 farmers that been supporting, some them have
00:17:44100 thousand farmers, some them have even a million farmers, but what we do is we use
00:17:48technology across the entire process where you send us a
00:17:52list of your farmers, we put it in our system, if we see ayuba,
00:17:55aliu, dantata, if we see dantata, ayuba, if we
00:17:59see aliu ayuba, it might be the same person,
00:18:03but the system is so intuitive enough to check through the national
00:18:07ation number and filter through the fake farmers and
00:18:11original farmers and don't forget the farmers also have
00:18:15coordinates of their farm that have been that have been captured by this farmarigation
00:18:18companies so by the time you put it there you can link a farmer not necessarily only
00:18:22to his NIN but to the cords of his farm want to able to do that
00:18:26our system accepts it so out the 1 million farmer some them brink we're only
00:18:30able to choose 12000 farmers some bring 5000
00:18:34farmers only able to choose maybe se 700 farmers. by the time we
00:18:38do this with all the people that we've sort of
00:18:40you know um chosen amongst them, we will now look for how to
00:18:43support them with more you know uh flexible
00:18:47terms to grow the tier f aggregation company to tier
00:18:51three, the tier three to tier two and the tier 2 to tier one, what what it
00:18:55means is if you need 50,00 farmers want to support you and hold you
00:18:58and right the process of you start do to do 100,00 farmers so that
00:19:02we can have enough of this farm irrigation companies become the obligar
00:19:06for us right? rather than bank of agriculture record you know
00:19:10massive um non-performing loans through individual
00:19:13microcredits to 3 million
00:19:16farmerers companies to do it let me just
00:19:20let me just try to understand um and and it's really
00:19:24impressive when you talk about you the use of technology
00:19:28and they have to be registered mean we're looking for how to make
00:19:32niger Nigerian economy more formal and
00:19:35inclusive so we do need a data and all of that, but I'm just
00:19:39thinking of um, when you look a bulk of
00:19:42farmers who, perhaps a lot them do not,
00:19:46because I remember a former minister of agriculture had tried
00:19:50to use fertilizer, USSD phones and all of that, and it
00:19:54seem lot of people were cut off from that, so while we
00:19:57appreciate the use of technology and data and
00:20:01getting them registered, I wonder if you also doing
00:20:05something about helping them even get registered even have
00:20:09their data,
00:20:10you know, some part of Nigeria, I don't think you can use GPS, especially when
00:20:14you go to the north and you want to use a GPS and all, so how do you
00:20:18handle such such situations, people in those
00:20:22areas? you
00:20:25see, I'll be very candid, technology has
00:20:28moved from 20,
00:20:3211 when the president, former president of AFDB
00:20:36was the minister of agriculture. this move to the point where
00:20:39i can use satellite data to actually know where you
00:20:43are, what you're doing a particular plot of land,
00:20:47when we go to... farmers sort of
00:20:50capture um data in very remote
00:20:53areas, we have device
00:20:57where you know we can take coordinates of the the farm
00:21:01based on GPS and GPRS, we can take the details the
00:21:04farmer, and we've done what is quite
00:21:08um interesting when I i when I got appointed by the
00:21:11president, the first thing I said on Air the very first time
00:21:15was to digitize the entire operations the bank, which we've done
00:21:19now, meaning "we have call banking application, we have a you know a
00:21:23farmer data registry that we're building out on and all that, and to be able to
00:21:27get the information of this farmers, when we go to the field with this tablet, we can
00:21:31actually open um not only n for
00:21:34them, but they can also actually get BVNs, so when
00:21:38we're boring the farmer and getting his details, we're automatically also at the same
00:21:42time solving problems of financial exclusion by opening the bank account for
00:21:46the farmer, and don't forget the founding fatherers"
00:21:50knew what they were doing with the bank of agriculture by setting it up in
00:21:53110 you know locations across the entire country, giving
00:21:57us closer proximity to the farmers, so we have agents,
00:22:01colleagues, staff all across the country, plus
00:22:05this for migration companies that we work with, we have
00:22:07you know warehouses and offices in the romatest part of Nigeria, so we have a
00:22:11minimum one office for senatorial district across the entire
00:22:15country, so we are you know the bank of agriculture,
00:22:18meaning we are the... of farmers, so we go there to
00:22:22actually get those farmers in. now what's going to be interesting that you
00:22:26would see in coming months is
00:22:30a bank, mobile bank in a bus, we're going
00:22:34to have bank of agriculture buses going to the
00:22:38remotest part of nigeria to provide financial services,
00:22:42agronomy services to the farmers plus the one stop shop, the
00:22:46agro hubs that were building across the entire country. this is not a model. that
00:22:50we invented, we're not trying to invent anything, we just
00:22:54want to copy models, apply to Nigeria and do it very well, this is a
00:22:57model with copied from
00:22:59you know bank of agriculture, vietnam where they have 200,
00:23:012,400 outlets and they are going
00:23:05to the farmers to actually give you know financial services
00:23:09to the farmers, so with all this things that admission is trying to do,
00:23:13this is
00:23:13to ensure there
00:23:14is no farmer that is disenfranchised,
00:23:17we have you know many schemes that we're trying to do irrigation
00:23:19for r where we're going to be providing solar irrigation kits to the farmers to
00:23:23eliminate dries in farming to ensure that with solar
00:23:26power the farmers are not you know um they're not they're
00:23:30not waiting on diesel or petrol to farm and this
00:23:34mobile system so the few things but i would like to go back to the garant
00:23:38minimum price which you asked me because it's the best tool that this
00:23:42administration has actually put into the agriculture sector
00:23:46and this will revolutionize agriculture so I'm happy to talk to you about that as well.
00:23:51Yeah, I mean, and of course that's that's our major
00:23:54conversation this morning, and I'm also interested in how
00:23:58this program is supposed to help deal with post harvest losses. We
00:24:01know that from records, the country loses about 50%
00:24:05of food production to post harvest losses, and you did say
00:24:09that this is part of what it's supposed to be dealing with, so how
00:24:13do you connect that? So
00:24:17the few things in resolving uh... service
00:24:20losses and we call ourselves within the bank of agriculture a ding
00:24:24tank,
00:24:24not a thing tank, we are very very intelligent smart people who sit down and
00:24:28th you create programs and projects every day to solve the
00:24:32problems within the within the sector, but we call as a ding tam because we also
00:24:36do stuff, so now to solve um this problem, the
00:24:40smart thing to do is look at why we have
00:24:44post service losses, first of all the farmer farms and a
00:24:48particular time that one hec is bring he's giving him
00:24:51you know 3 tons, 3 tons is 3000 kg,
00:24:55if farmada has
00:24:56an nocada or um motorcycle can only
00:25:00move 50 kg at one time
00:25:03right, we are creating a scheme where we're doing emobility, cargo
00:25:06tricycles that are battery powered or electricity
00:25:10powered that can go out there, they've got
00:25:12a big back that can move
00:25:14to 2 to 3,00 kg at once, so number one you
00:25:18solve that problem of you know things are getting rotten on the field, number
00:25:22two, are the farm gate,
00:25:23you know you're moving things from the farm to the farm gate now, are the farm gate with this
00:25:27guarantee minimum price, we become buyers of last resort, we are
00:25:31there we are aggregators who are saying we want to
00:25:35buy all all of your stuff, boa has given you you know a floor
00:25:38price, meaning they can't cheat you anymore, we
00:25:42create a system where we reduce um all the middle
00:25:45men trying to um play um
00:25:51um arbitrage where they buy things from the farmers because the farmers know these
00:25:55things are going to spoil anyway if they don't sell it and trying to play on the you know the
00:25:58vulnerability the farmer so so we eliminate that completely want to... able to
00:26:02do that, they move things to storage, whether you like it or not, if you
00:26:06look at b private storage and government silos, we
00:26:10have over 9 million or 9 million tons of storage
00:26:14in country, even with the mom and pop shop that is to
00:26:18converted to a warehouse to the big ones, so we can actually
00:26:22store stuff, now the point is the farm irrigation companies know they do for
00:26:26business, like i said they do without us anyway, they go to the commercial banks get
00:26:29money at 35% to actually give for farmers input through
00:26:33input financing scheme, aggregate from the farmers and they take it to the warehouse,
00:26:37but sometimes they price the farmers too low, so this guarantee minimum price
00:26:41means that they have to give the farmers the price that we set
00:26:45that the government has given to the farmer, which solves the problem the supply
00:26:48side, now the problem the demand the demand side means
00:26:52if prices are cripping up too high, the mers and the
00:26:56FMCG companies will start to complain, and when they complain about prices being
00:27:00too high, they they can lobby, they will... be for government to
00:27:03start
00:27:04you know um bringing any cheaperts from abroad which we
00:27:08completely would you know um uh frown to so on
00:27:12the demand side where prices are cripping up too high i think for miss for
00:27:15kissing point we're giving them 340
00:27:1850000 uh per metric ton which is you
00:27:22know a far cry from the prices that went
00:27:25up to uh i think it went as low as 16000
00:27:29now it's cripped up since we started it to maybe about
00:27:32310,000 because we're also doing sensitization on over
00:27:3640
00:27:37um um digital channels uh radio uh tv and print
00:27:41media um once we're able to give these
00:27:45farmers guarantee minimum price we're storing value we're not wasting
00:27:48money we're not giving them a subsidy
00:27:50this gets stored in you know uh warehouses
00:27:54when the when the um when on the demand side these mailers
00:27:58are complaining and the prices are cripping up to 45000 50000
00:28:03at at particular point in 2023 may prices
00:28:07was about 600,00 per ton, we can now release this grains to the
00:28:11market and release it to the market at maybe 400
00:28:15thousand, so that's what we call a market stabilization mechanism that
00:28:19this administration is trying to
00:28:21you know um um implement
00:28:25for the agriculture sector in Nigeria,
00:28:27meaning there's no one who complains about food prices
00:28:31are too high or... food prices are too low, yeah, and and I
00:28:35guess with a plan like this, Nigeria should be able to
00:28:38overcome,
00:28:39you know, the uh off-season hike in at the
00:28:43price of some food crops and all of that, but I mean even from the
00:28:47explanation you have given, it sounds like it needs a lot
00:28:50of coordination, I wonder um, how you have the
00:28:54value chain around that, what plans you have
00:28:58there? Okay, I'll continue to
00:29:02go... um back to the point that made earlier that this farm
00:29:05aggregation companies, they do without us,
00:29:08likes of norma aeffects, driver
00:29:11greek, they support half million farmers each,
00:29:15they know how to you know aggregate from the farmers and
00:29:19they have contracts with you know fls of Nigeria,
00:29:23what, TGI, alls of this world, we are now
00:29:27trying to say if we step in with step we stepping in
00:29:31not only to...
00:29:32you to grow you from 500 thousand farmers to million farmers, because we are trying
00:29:36to finance 70 million farmers in Nigeria, if
00:29:40you know we continue to uh raise enough capital for that, we are
00:29:43trying to say within the ecosystem, we are
00:29:46bringing
00:29:47you know our own expertise, but the most important thing is working with
00:29:51everybody, and bringing together the power the collective
00:29:55where we all have different roles to play amerigation company has role to play,
00:29:59the exchanges have role to play, by the time you this commodities
00:30:03to the warehouse, the NCX Nigeria Commodity exchange or
00:30:07AFX goes to the warehouse to issue electronic warehouse receipts that is
00:30:10tradeable on on exchange, so it means that the flammers of
00:30:14Nigeria who want to buy, they stop disturbing themselves looking for grains, they can
00:30:18actually book on this exchange platform to say the one 40,00 tons of
00:30:21grains for October, and
00:30:25because there's an electric was receives that talks about that, and collateral managers
00:30:29who could actually attest the fact this... do
00:30:32exist in those warehouses, they pay through the exchange, exchange takes their
00:30:36fees, they pay the aggregator by aggregator pays us back the loan that we get to the
00:30:39aggregator, so it's all ecosystem, and don't forget we have a
00:30:43parent ministry that gives us direction that sets the policy, which is the ministry of
00:30:47agriculture,
00:30:48you know, man by the minister of agriculture and food security,
00:30:51senator Abubakar Kiari, so it's it's all working together as a
00:30:55collective, now we're going to be working
00:30:58you know in partnership with other um agen