How Politicians’ Wives And Cronies Diverted Billions In Anchor Borrowers Fund
OpenLife News reports that last year, an internal review by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) laid bare the scale of government’s administrative failure in agricultural financing.
Its intervention portfolio had surpassed N10 trillion, but approximately N4.7 trillion of that fund remained unrecovered.
The revelation, made by Dr Michael Ononugbo, Deputy Director and Special Assistant at the Economic Policy Directorate of the CBN, during the GIZ Agric Finance closeout session in Abuja, was a damning indictment of the direct intervention model.
“Following an internal assessment in 2025, the bank’s intervention portfolio exceeded N10 trillion, with outstanding repayments nearing N4.7 trillion.
“Although these interventions provided short-term support to key sectors, they generated significant market distortions, spurred excess liquidity and caused challenges for monetary management,” Ononugbo said.
He admitted that experience over the years had “unearthed the limitations of direct intervention models” and underscored the need for a more pragmatic and sustainable approach to development financing.
The consequences of that inefficiency are now visible across other development finance institutions. The Bank of Agriculture (BOA) has unveiled a nationwide initiative to recover over N20 billion in non-performing loans as part of its recapitalisation efforts.
Since 2017, the Bank of Industry (BOI), which also funds agricultural businesses, has carried billions in non-performing loans.
At the heart of the N4.7 trillion black hole is a broken administrative system that allows fake farmers to hijack loans meant for real farmers.
Technically, people who pretend to be legitimate farmers claim significant portions of these loans and obtain subsidies, subsidised loans and input supports without actually owning or running a farm.
These so-called farmers operate under several aliases: political farmers, paper farmers, ghost farmers, portfolio farmers or briefcase farmers, Abuja farmers, armchair farmers, office farmers, and WhatsApp and telephone farmers.
They are politicians, well-connected elites or their cronies who utilise political influence and patronage to divert seeds, fertilisers and loan facilities intended for real rural smallholders.
Their activities are exclusively documented through fraudulent registrations, bogus proposals and fake cooperative societies established solely to attract financial or input support.
An agricultural economist, Mr Innocent Oklo, said the inefficiency is deliberate. Corrupt officials, he alleged, add fictitious or identity-theft-based names to government databases, including the Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP), to steal inputs and fertilisers for resale.
Another agricultural economist, James Torkaa, said: “Such ‘farmers’ only go about with portfolios and Corporate Affairs Commission certificates to collect inputs, loans and anchor borrowers’ money. They don’t even visit any farm, but they collect subsidies from air-conditioned offices.
They are either politicians, ex-politicians or their wives, as well as cronies who get on the list because of connections. They only own lands on paper.”
Some affluent urban elites, Oklo added, successfully seek agricultural grants or loans using corporate or political connections, only to divert the money to real estate, forex trading or oil and gas.
In 2024, the House of Representatives launched an investigation into “the alleged misuse of government interventions and agricultural funding by departments, agencies, schemes and programmes outside the Federal Ministry of Agriculture,” worth N2 trillion.
The lawmakers said spending through the Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL), Anchor Borrowers’ Programme and other interventions ran into trillions without any commensurate output.
Field reports from states show how administrative loopholes fuel the crisis. In Benue, agronomist Dr Teryima Iorlamen of Joseph Sarwuan Tarka University, Makurdi, said officials manipulate beneficiary lists, nominate relatives and divert fertilisers to traders at New Garage in Makurdi or outside the state.
In Kano, Habu Danzaria, a textile trader at Tarauni LGA secretariat who is not a farmer, told Weekend Trust he got five bags of fertiliser last year through councillors and sold them.
The national president of Cocoa and Plantain Farmers Association of Nigeria, Ondo chapter, Ayodele Ojo, said: “We have unknown farmers in Ondo State who only show up when government wants to share palliatives to farmers. Most times, they are people who have influence even more than we who are presidents of associations.”
The All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Benue chapter, said real farmers are considered powerless, allowing officials and contractors to exploit them.
Experts say the inefficiency goes beyond diversion. Lack of verification, late distribution, and absence of GPS farm mapping allow diversion to thrive.
Iorlamen recommended cluster farming as done in Jigawa, phased input distribution, farm mapping, and collaboration with credible out-grower organisations to build a verifiable database.
Until government fixes its verification and recovery administration by tying loans to verifiable farming activities, conducting physical farm visits, and holding officials accountable, the N4.7 trillion unrecovered loans will remain a monument to administrative inefficiency, while genuine smallholders continue to record low yields, high costs and worsening food insecurity.
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