The rigorous financial and management principles being implemented at the Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending, also known as NIRSAL Plc will make it practically impossible to loot a whooping sum of N150bn, sources within the organization have revealed.
NIRSAL was launched in 2011 and incorporated in 2013 by the Central Bank of Nigeria as a dynamic, holistic $500m public-private initiative to catalyse the flow of finance and investments into fixed agricultural value chains.
It was established to address the causes of low funding levels in the agriculture sector, including lack of understanding of the sector, perceived high risks, complex credit assessment processes/procedures, and high transaction costs.
The Company is a wholly-owned investee company of the CBN, operating on a debenture loan as a capital base and incorporated with the mandate to de-risk agriculture and facilitate agribusiness.
There had been media reports of an alleged N150bn scam rocking NIRSAL involving the Managing Director, Aliyu Abbati AbdulHameed; his son, Imran and cronies in the agency.
The media reports (NOT THE WHISTLER) had said that the MD and his son were accused of looting the intervention fund meant for farmers in the past five years.
One of the report had claimed that the NIRSAL MD and his allies allegedly fraudulently rake in about N204, 203,000 on a monthly basis and a total sum of N2.45bn annually from the payroll of the consultants engaged at the 37 Project Monitoring and Remediation Offices.
But sources with knowledge of the operation of NIRSAL told this website that the Company reports its finances in full compliance with the International Financial Reporting Standards.
One of the source explained that as a fully compliant public liability company, NIRSAL under the leadership of AbdulHameed has been filing its annual returns with the Corporate Affairs Commission and Financial Reporting Council.
The Company, the source noted, had also held its Annual General Meetings regularly throughout these six years of its operational existence.
The official explained further that with all the filings made by NIRSAL to CAC as well as the convocation of statutory AGMs, the shareholders of the company would have raised the alarm about any shady deal made by the management of the Company of such had existed.
The source said such fraud alarm had yet to be raised by the shareholders of the company.
The source said, “NIRSAL PLC’s financial reports are regularly filed at the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) as required by law and are publicly available.
“The allegations of fraud as published in the report is the height of ridiculousness. How can one publish such about a company that is not only under the rigorous oversight of the Central Bank of Nigeria but whose funds are domiciled in the apex bank.
“It is also a fact that NIRSAL PLC, by its mandate, is not a lender that directly provides loans to SMEs or MFBs or any other business for that matter and does not keep farmers or anybody’s funds.
“How can the leadership of an organization steal funds that it never had, funds that simply didn’t exist in the first place? And since these funds did not exist, pray, what funds did they steal in these ridiculous stories?”
The source further stated that since its inception, its capital base has not exceeded N72.5bn and the fund is held with the apex bank.
The official said “Total capital base is N72.5bn. Perhaps more importantly, this capital is technical, not physical and is held within the CBN system, permanently invested in FGN Bonds, Treasury Bills and other money market investments.
“It is the proceeds from these that the company’s Board of Directors approves, through budget processes, for the management to pay salaries, pay out on crystallized guarantees given to farmers and other agribusiness investors when their loans are unpaid, fix the agricultural value chain through its technical assistance services, train farmers, bankers, insurance industry players, and rate and incentivize good borrowing and repayment behaviour by borrowers when they use NIRSAL Plc guarantees. The CBN is also NIRSAL’s banker, supporting its day-to-day operations.”
“All the foregoing are monies prudently spent for the public good by NIRSAL Plc from its very modest earnings. Yet, it is within this modest financial provisioning that the organization continues to declare profits, pay dividends, amortize/pay back its own debenture loans and remain a going concern like any other company incorporated under CAMA and regulated by the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC).”
Another top official in NIRSAL told THE WHISTLER that since he took over as the pioneer MD of the company, Abdulhameed has implemented reforms aimed at enabling the Company play it’s catalytic role in derisking the agriculture sector and it’s value chain.
The source said it was in recognition of his outstanding contributions to agriculture and agribusiness, that Abdulhameed emerged winner of the CEO Today magazine Global Award in 2021.
The top official listed some of the innovations that have been introduced to the Nigerian agriculture sector as a result of Abdulhameed’s stewardship at NIRSAL to include the creation of the NIRSAL Agro Geo-Cooperative (AGC) concept, which structures farmers and aggregates their farmlands into contiguous stretches of 250 hectares each and links them with training, input, mechanisation, financing and produce buyers.
Others are the creation and mapping of Agricultural Commodity Ecological Areas (ACEAs); the development of the Mapping to Markets (M2M) strategy; the development of innovative index-based agricultural insurance products; the introduction of comprehensive field monitoring by remote sensing satellite systems and granular validation by UAS platforms; and the development of the Secured Agricultural Commodity Transport & Storage Corridor (SATS-C) model, to address logistical inefficiencies in the agricultural value chain in Nigeria.
The source added that among NIRSAL Plc’s achievements that enhanced the global reckoning of the institution and Abdulhameed, is the facilitation of over $550m to various actors across Agricultural Value Chains for mechanisation activities, input distribution, and the production, processing, trading and marketing of agricultural commodities.
– culled from THE WHISTLER.
