Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, governor of Enugu, has appealed to financial institutions to make loans easily accessible to farmers to enhance productivity and ensure food security.

Mr Ugwuanyi made the appeal on Tuesday in Enugu, while declaring open a two-day workshop on International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) Technical Assistance Support to Financial Suppliers and Other Value Chain Actors in three states.

The governor, represented by the state commissioner for agriculture, Matthew Idu, said that financial aid to farmers was necessary to enhance food production.

He urged financial institutions to come up with policies to cut down on protocol and “undue demands” before a simple loan could be granted to “genuine but poor farmers.”

According to him, “Financial institutions should not cluster their loans with lots of demands and even those beyond the poor farmers to provide.

“You should see how best to work out loans with farmers. Bank agricultural desk officers should go to the field and know the farmers one-on-one. This is to ensure that loans are not given to political farmers,” the governor said.

“The end point is repayment of the loan and present realities and studies show that genuine farmers always repay their loans by making sacrifices to ensure good yields,” Mr Ugwuanyi said.

“It is clear that what is learnt and being implemented by the IFAD-VCDP programme will be used to boost the state’s farmers participation in the Central Bank of Nigeria’s Anchor Borrowers Programme,” he said.

Earlier, the National Programme Coordinator of IFAD-VCDP, Garba Bala, said the workshop would provide technical assistance support to selected financial institutions and other value-chain actors to enhance financial inclusiveness of VCDP beneficiaries.

He said the beneficiaries were those within IFAD-VCDP programme activities along the rice and cassava value chain.