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About 1,000 rural cassava farmers in Kogi State have been selected as beneficiaries of a loan facility from Nigeria Agricultural Payment Initiative Scheme.
The pilot disbursement of the loan and grant to rural farmers through e-wallet system was held in Lokoja on Friday.
Young farmers and government officials gathered in the Glass Hall of the Government House in Lokoja for the launch of the pilot disbursement.
The State government said the loan would assist the farmers in boosting agricultural produce which the government would in turn buy from them.
Explaining how the programme works, the Special Adviser on Agriculture and the managing Director of ADP, Professor Dominic Akpa, said that 1,000 farmers would benefit.
While calling on the Governor to provide the needed political will to ensure the sustainability of the scheme, the President of Kogi Cluster Farms Development Union, Mr Alfred Okeme, said the NAPI Wallet System was a strong and transparent medium that would provide an End-to-end Payment Recipient System among all the agricultural business actors.
A short play-let was also dramatised by the Kogi Art Council to enlighten the audience on the importance of the programme.
While launching the scheme and giving out agricultural produce to the beneficiaries, Captain Wada in his speech said the Kogi State government had been able to validate over 145 rural farmers who are being issue with a small cheap identity card.
The identity card will be used as a host for farmers’ ‘bio-metric farmland’, to form group information and create access to a banquet of agricultural services made available by both the Federal and State government.
He then congratulated the beneficiaries and urged them to utilise the loan for what it is meant for.
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