Provision of Credit and Loan Facilities by Nigerian Agricultural Cooperative and Rural Development Bank (NACRDB) to Farmers: Implications for Extension Services Delivery

Abstract

This paper assessed NACRDB’S credit and loan facilities provision for rural farmers, in Nigeria. Date were collected through structured questionnaires, the data were analyzed using frequency counts, percentages and mean scores. Results showed that the micro –Credit/ loan was the most patronized by the rural farmers. The other credit / loan offered such as the ECOWAS, the IFAD project and the ATHP programme were not patronized at all, probably due to the unimportance of the type of projects sponsored by these credit/ loan facilities in the study area. Results showed that, majority of farmers (82.9%) were married and (34.5%) were well educated. Their major and minor occupation was farming and civil service respectively. Problems identified on the part of the beneficiaries included, late release of funds, and short payback period. Other problems included excessive bureaucracy, short grace period, and services not regularly available and high interest rate. Also NACRDB staff indicated their major problems as; lack of awareness by borrowers (30%), Late release of approved funds by headquarters (56.7%) poor funding of field officers (40%), insufficient fund (10%). The study also showed the areas requiring improvement such as; use of extension workers in dissemination of information (60%), computerization of the banks (56.7%), timely release of approved funds (45.7%), increase loan duration (42.9%), more awareness campaigns (41.4%), give attention to individuals than groups (37.1%), give enough to meet needs/ demand (37.1%), give more attention to groups than individuals (37.5%); the study recommended that there should be more awareness campaigns by NACRDB, the bank should strive to approve more funds under the scheme and timeliness in the release of funds especially release of fund for meeting the peak period of farmers demand for credit.