About 10,000 workers of Kogi State Government are expected to benefit from an Agric business Retirement Loan. The loan worth N10 billion was approved for the state by the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN. The scheme is expected to take off soon.

Mr Joseph Idoko, Consultant in charge of the Scheme, who disclosed this while addressing journalists on the significance of the scheme in Lokoja said the CBN had already approved fund for the scheme.

Idoko hinted that the programme, an off-shoot of the CBN Anchor Borrowers Scheme, was specifically an indirect cluster farming investment for the workers, with Oil palm and its value chain as mandate crop.

According to him, the broad objectives of the Agribusiness programme, designed under the CBN real sector support facilities, include the diversification from oil to non-oil sectors and to provide retirement investment farms for workers.

Idoko said that the scheme, fashioned under the CBN Real Sector Support Facilities, “is designed as a retirement investment scheme for government workers and workers in the organised private sector.”

He said that the scheme also planned, among other objectives, to enrol the participating workers in the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) under the Organised Private Sector.

The Consultant explained that beneficiaries would cut across the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) as well as staff of the state Judiciary and institutions of higher learning in the state.

Idoko said that land for the 10,000 hectres Oil-palm estate had been provided at Amaka in Igalamela-Odolu Local Government Area with partners from Florida, USA.

“The idea is for government workers to retire into a particular business that even when they are no more in goveenment work, something can be coming to them to be able to take care of their families.

He said that the pilot scheme being launched in Kogi was a demonstration of Governor Yahaya Bello’s commitment to providing workers with a new lease of life and also guarantee their well-being after retirement.

According to him, the scheme comes in form of a loan of N1million to each participant at nine per cent interest and payable in nine years after a two-year moratorium.

The benefitting workers would begin to receive a N240,000 each as annual dividend after a four-year gestation period before the oil palm starts producing and from then, the dividends would service the loans and liquidate them.