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.

Keywords: Micro credit, rural, development, and facilities.

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